Economic Directness in the Western Andes: A New Model of Socioeconomic Organization for the Paracas Culture in the First Millennium BC

Abstract

Economic directness is a new model of socioeconomic organization for the Paracas culture (800–200 BC) in southern Peru, with wider implications for economic theory of the prehispanic Andean past. Using an archaeoeconomic approach to analyze settlement patterns, obsidian artifacts, malacological material, and camelid skeletal remains, this study reconstructs the Paracas economy by using primary archaeological data from the northern Nasca Drainage. Its results force reconsideration of existing socioeconomic models for the ancient Andes such as verticality, circuit mobility, llama caravan mobility, transhumance, and market concepts. Whereas components typical of these models are often absent in the case of the Paracas economy, our new proposal of economic directness integrates their relevant aspects. Economic directness is defined essentially by direct access to important resources from diverse ecological tiers, direct and down-the-line exchanges, reduced transaction costs, llama caravan transport, unbalanced commodity flows across the western Andes, and forces of supply and demand with major consumption on the coast. These features formed under conditions of population growth, generating a continuous and dense settlement pattern from the Pacific coast to the highland puna zone.

An integrative approach to ancient agricultural terraces and forms of dependency: the case of Cutamalla in the prehispanic Andes

“…Resource dependency was recently defined as entailing two elementary types of structural dependency which constantly interact within their particular ecological and socio-cultural contexts (Mader et al, 2023a). The first type concerns human dependencies on resources of any kind, including the control of access to those resources, while the second concerns dependencies between people, seen in all sorts of work relations, labor exploitation, and beyond.…”

“…Associated features include storage facilities, boundary markers such as walls, trails with stairs and ramps, way stations (Quechua: tambos), and stone-walled corrals to herd South American camelids and, nowadays, mostly animals introduced from the Old World, such as cattle and sheep. Such infrastructure is necessary for the many mobile aspects of agriculture, requiring the constant movement of people, animals, water, raw materials, tools, and crops (Erickson, 2019;Mader et al, 2022Mader et al, , 2023aBeresford-Jones et al, 2023). It goes without saying that the complexity of the agricultural systems is "rooted" in millennia of indigenous knowledge and experience.…”

“…Cutamalla is situated in the southern highlands of Peru, in the quechua zone at an elevation of 3,300 m asl, approximately 6 km southeast of the modern village of Laramate, in the province of Lucanas, Ayacucho (Figure 1). The settlement of Cutamalla extends along a ridge above the Laramate River and consists of two sectors: domestic Sector A is located in the southern part, while public Sector B is in the northern part (Reindel et al, 2015;Isla, 2017, 2018;Mader et al, 2018Mader et al, , 2023aMader, 2019a). The slopes around the settlement are covered with extensive ancient agricultural terraces belonging to the Te-07 terrace agricultural system (Figure 2), with two other terrace systems (Te-09 and Te-10) to the south.…”

Beyond Inca roads: archaeological mobilities from the high Andes to the Pacific in southern Peru

“…High-resolution survey and excavations of the study area's highlands, however, reveal a continuous Paracas settlement pattern extending across the entire western Andean flank, from the Pacific littoral to the high puna above 4000m asl (Soßna 2015). Moreover, patterns of mobility, evidenced by the long-distance exchange of raw materials and end products suggest direct access to, and control of, those resources across all the ecological tiers of the western Andes during the Early Horizon (Mader 2019; Mader et al 2022).…”

Money or ingots? Metrological research on pre-contact Ecuadorian ‘axe-monies’

“…Several studies recently opened the possibility of different approaches to the circulation and provision of goods and raw materials in space and time. New approaches propose the existence of marketplaces in a barter exchange system, limited to some types of goods (Stanish & Coben, 2013;Topic, 2013;Burger, 2013;Mader et al, 2022). In contrast to the Murra model for the Ecuadorian area, the microverticality model favors easy access to different raw materials and products in a community, favoring the exchange within (Oberem, 1978;Salomon, 1986).…”