Crafting a colony: Geochemical insights into 1000 years of state craft in the Moquegua Valley, Peru

Abstract

The long-distance movement of craft items and ideas about their manufacture contribute to imperial projects; facilitating the dissemination of ideologies, serving as tribute, and acting as media for actors to assert affinity with elites and for elites to reward subjects. We interrogate how pottery production and distribution were influenced and involved in different imperial strategies over approximately 1000 years in one Andean valley. Attractive to colonizing polities for its agricultural potential, the Moquegua Valley was first incorporated into expansive states during the Middle Horizon (500–1000 CE) when both the Wari and Tiwanaku established provincial enclaves there. In the 15th century, the valley was subject to Inka colonization. A century later, it was Spanish imperialism that shaped Moquegua’s sociopolitical dynamics. Despite this recurrent pattern of conquest and incorporation, the nature of these incursions likely varied. The elemental data discussed here were generated through LA-ICP-MS on ceramics excavated from archaeological sites that span this millennium of imperialism; they include ceramic material associated with all four political incursions as well as the four centuries long Late Intermediate Period (LIP) when Moquegua was not under the influence of external state authority. Coupled with a robust compositional database of clays that facilitates distinguishing imported ceramics and also the exploitation of different resources within the valley, the data from Moquegua present an opportunity to a) reconstruct a diachronic picture of resource acquisition, the organization of production, and participation in local, regional, and long distance exchange networks and b) interrogate similarities and differences in how craft was implicated in diverse strategies of statecraft. The elemental data suggest that crafting activities were configured in different ways for each of the four expansive polities in Moquegua. As such these data add weight to recent scholarship that argues that crafting activities in contexts of imperialism cannot be reduced to simple models. Additionally, the data from the LIP contribute to comparative dialogue on production and exchange during periods of political localism, and illustrate the ways in which crafting activities participate in intercommunity dynamics during periods of social turmoil.