Eating is essential for life, but it also embodies social and symbolic dimensions. This volume shows how foods and peoples were mutually transformed in the ancient Andes.
Exploring the multiple social, ecological, cultural, and ontological dimensions of food in the Andean past, the contributors of Foodways of the Ancient Andes offer diverse theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches that reveal the richness, sophistication, and ingenuity of Andean peoples. The volume spans time periods and localities in the Andean region to reveal how food is intertwined with multiple aspects of the human experience, from production and consumption to ideology and sociopolitical organization. It illustrates the Andean peoples’ resilience in the face of challenges brought about by food scarcity and environmental change. Chapters dissect the intersection of food, power, and status in early states and empires; examine the impact of food during times of conflict and instability; and illuminate how sacred and high-status foods contributed to the building of the Inka Empire.
Featuring forty-six contributors from ten countries, the chapters employ new analytical methods, integrating different food data and interdisciplinary research to show that food can provide not only simple nutrition but also a multitude of strategies, social and political relationships, and ontologies that are otherwise invisible in the archaeological record.
Contributors
Aleksa K. Alaica
Sonia Alconini
Marta Alfonso-Durruty
Sarah I. Baitzel
Véronique Bélisle
Carolina Belmar
Carrie Anne Berryman
Matthew E. Biwer
Deborah E. Blom
Tamara L. Bray
Matthew T. Brown
Maria C. Bruno
José M. Capriles
Katherine L. Chiou
Susan D. deFrance
Lucia M. Diaz
Richard P. Evershed
Maureen E. Folk
Alexandra Greenwald
Chris Harrod
Christine A. Hastorf
Iain Kendall
Kelly J. Knudson
BrieAnna S. Langlie
Cecilia Lemp
Petrus le Roux
Marcos Martinez
Anahí Maturana-Fernández
Weston C. McCool
Melanie J. Miller
Nicole Misarti
Flavia Morello
Patricia Quiñonez Cuzcano
Omar Reyes
Arturo F. Rivera Infante
Manuel San Román
Francisca Santana-Sagredo
Beth K. Scaffidi
Augusto Tessone
Andrés Troncoso
Tiffiny A. Tung
Mauricio Uribe
Natasha P. Vang
Sadie L. Weber
Kurt M. Wilson
Michelle E. Young
Author(s): Marta P. Alfonso-Durruty, Deborah E. Blom
Series: Amerind Studies in Archaeology
Publisher: University of Arizona Press
Year: 2023
Language: English
Pages: 384
City: Tuscon
Cover
Series Information
Title Page
Copyright
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Transforming Foods in the Ancient Andes / Blom, Alfonso-Durruty, and deFrance
Part I. The Impact of Place and Long-Distance Interactions on Foodways
1. The Environmental Null: Documenting the Changing Influence of Physical and Social Environments on Prehistoric Andean Diets / Wilson and McCool
2. What Is Cooking in the Pots of the Chiloé Archipelago? Plant Use Trajectories Through Ceramic Residue Analysis / Belmar et al
3. Eating Local, Drinking Imported: Chicha Recipes, Emulative Desire, and Identity Formation at Atalla, Huancavelica, Peru / Weber and Young
4. Eating from the Earth on the Shores of Lake Titicaca: A Multimethod Approach to Understanding the Diets of Taraco Peninsula Inhabitants / Miller et al
Part II. Food, Power, and Status in Early States and Empires
5. Transforming Food in the Tiwanaku Heartland: Maize and the Rise and Fall of Sociopolitical Complexity in the Southern Lake Titicaca Basin / Berryman and Blom
6. Paleodiet Outside of the Tiwanaku Heartland: Isotopic Analysis of Individuals Buried at Tiwanaku-Affiliated Sites in the Moquegua Valley, Peru / Knudson et al
7. Private Dinners and Public Feasts: Food as Political Action in Middle Horizon Cusco / Bélisle, Alaica, and Brown
8. Extraordinary Meals in the Wari Empire: Zooarchaeological and Paleoethnobotanical Evidence from the Site of Quilcapampa La Antigua / Biwer, Alaica, and Quiñonez Cuzcano
Part III. Food During Times of Trouble: Conflict, Instability, and Collapse
9. Maize as a Marker: An Isotopic Perspective on Childhood Diets and the Constitutive Power of Food in the Lower Majes Valley, Peru / Scaffidi, Vang, and Tung
10. Diasporic Foodways and the Transformation of Andean Agropastoralism in the Wake of Tiwanaku Collapse (11th–12th Century CE) at Los Batanes, Sama Valley / Baitzel et al
11. Inside the Moche House: Uncovering Peasant Foodways in the Andean Past / Chiou
12. Camelids in the Oasis: New Evidence from the Pica 8 Cemetery, Atacama Desert, Northern Chile(AD 900–1450) / Santana-Sagredo
Part IV. Building the Inka Empire with Sacred and High-Status Foods
13. The Dietary Impact of the Inka’s Political Strategies in the Semi-Arid Region (30°–31° S. Lat) of Northern Chile / Alfonso-Durruty, Misarti, and Troncoso
14. Inka Kallawayas: Cuisine, Identity, and Status Negotiations in the Eastern Antisuyu Chuncho Margins / Alconini
15. The Vital Matter of Food / Bray
Part V. Future Directions and Conclusion
16. Foods, Diets, and Cuisines in the Andes: Some Concluding Thoughts / deFrance
Contributors
Index
