Cultural filiations between the Virú communities, Early Intermediate Period, northern coast of Peru: Recent contributions from ceramic technology

Abstract

The Virú populations are now believed to have formed a centralized polity in the Virú Valley, which occasionally settled in neighboring regions, as in Pampa La Cruz in the Moche Valley, and Huaca Prieta in the Chicama Valley. Their presence is essentially established by their cultural marker: negative ceramic. However, little is known about the relations between these populations, and in particular about the technical traditions of potters, which would enable us to know if they belong to the same community of potters. We propose to test the hypothesis of a movement of Virú communities into adjacent valleys by a technological approach that seeks to reconstruct all the steps of the Virú ceramic production. The analysis of manufacturing traces combined with the petrographic study of pastes leads to the definition of a technical tradition shared and perpetuated by these communities, each producing its own pottery locally.