War or Peace on the Central Coast?

Abstract

In chapter 5, “War or Peace on the Central Coast? Questioning Metanarratives of Late Intermediate Period Mobocracies on the Basis of Ychsma Evidence from Pachacamac, Peruvian Central Coast,” Eeckhout and Owens systematically analyze the evidence for conflict and violence in the pre-hispanic cultures of ancient Peru, in order to contextualize a particular case study: the site of Pachacamac. This multi-pronged investigation includes a review of archaeological data (weapons, fortifications), iconography, bioarchaeology (traumatic lesions) and ethnohistorical data. The authors develop an interpretational framework to examine how these disparate data streams can be reconciled in order to clarify the social and environmental correlates of traumatic pathology, and to differentiate the signatures engendered by all levels of violence from the inter-personal (conflict; domestic abuse) to the socio-cultural (ritual violence) and the state-sanctioned (battles and wars).