Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Rural Domestic Economy and Chimu Political Economy: Household Organization at the El Brujo Site Complex, Chicama Valley, Peru

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Under the direction of Dr. Katharina Schreiber, Mr. James Tate will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. Mr. Tate will carry out archaeological excavations at the El Brujo Site Complex in the Chicama Valley, Peru. The complex is of great interest archaeologically as it consists of a series of domestic habitations and ceremonial mounds that represent over four thousand years of human occupation spanning the Preceramic through Colonial periods, ca. 3000 B.C. - A.D. 1532. This investigation focuses on the later Chimu occupation of the site and the organization of the domestic economy of the residents. The site is particularly significant given the existence of early colonial period documents that describe the economic and social organization of the site and the surrounding area. In addition, the exceptional preservation of organic material at the site results in an unparalleled opportunity to observe archaeological patterns of production, processing, distribution, consumption, and disposal of craft goods and subsistence resources. A primary recovery method will be the collection of soil samples that will produce data on diet and subsistence. The investigator will then compare patterns of production and consumption to existing research, and ethnohistoric accounts of the Chicama Valley, El Brujo, and the nearby town of Magdalena de Cao, a method that has proven valuable to Inca studies. During the Late Intermediate Period (A.D. 1000-A.D. 1476) the Chimu culture developed on the north coast of Peru and established a hierarchically organized expansive state that eventually grew to control the coastal region from the Chillon Valley on the central coast to Tumbes in the north. The Chimu are known archaeologically and ethnohistorically as specialized producers of elite goods such as metals and textiles that served in a redistributive economy based on the control of luxury goods, and financed by irrigation agriculture. Little however is known about the relationship between the state political economy and the local domestic economy of communities outside administrative and political centers. Mr. Tate's investigation will add a new dimension to existing research by presenting data gathered from household contexts. Research carried out at the household level provides the opportunity to study aspects of human economic, political, and social organization invisible at a larger scale. Accordingly, the study of El Brujo provides a necessary addition to existing research by identifying the range of domestic activities that characterize a household in the archaeological record, and contributing a detailed description of daily life in a Chimu community. This research is also important because it will integrate different approaches to the understanding of prehispanic culture at El Brujo, where the overwhelming focus of investigation has been monumental architecture. Further, the research will contribute to a growing body of anthropological and archaeological literature on households in complex societies and will assist in training a promising young scientist.