Late Intermediate Period Funerary Traditions, Population Aggregation, and the Ayllu in the Sihuas Valley, Peru

Abstract

The Late Intermediate period in the south-central Andes is known for the widespread use of open sepulchres called chullpas by descent-based ayllus to claim rights to resources and express idealized notions of how society should be organized. Chullpas, however, were rarer on the coast, with the dead often buried individually in closed tombs. This article documents conditions under which these closed tombs were used at the site of Quilcapampa on the coastal plain of southern Peru, allowing an exploration into the ways that funerary traditions were employed to both reflect and generate community affiliation, ideals about sociopolitical organization, and land rights. After a long hiatus, the site was reoccupied and quickly expanded through local population aggregation and highland migrations. An ayllu organization that made ancestral claims to specific resources was poorly suited to these conditions, and the site's inhabitants instead seem to have organized themselves around the ruins of Quilcapampa's earlier occupation. In describing what happened in Quilcapampa, we highlight the need for a better understanding of the myriad ways that Andean peoples used mortuary customs to structure the lives of the living during a period of population movements and climate change.

Burying the Dead at Ayawiri: Mortuary Diversity and Postmortem Manipulation at an Andean Hillfort (AD 1100–1450)

“…Alongside and outside the chullpa tradition, societies of the Late Intermediate period (LIP; AD 1100–1450) forged other ways of creating community and social memory that are only now garnering greater scholarly attention. In the Sihuas Valley of southern Peru, Jennings and colleagues (2021) argue that the thousands of subterranean cist tombs clustered into family plots at the former Wari site of Quilcapampa represent a different kind of relationship between individuals, collectives, and the land. Whereas chullpas typically are thought to have differentiated the resource rights of competing landholding groups, the aggregation of tombs at Quilcapampa marked collective “claims to this powerful place and the arable land below it” (Jennings et al 2021:14).…”

“…In the Sihuas Valley of southern Peru, Jennings and colleagues (2021) argue that the thousands of subterranean cist tombs clustered into family plots at the former Wari site of Quilcapampa represent a different kind of relationship between individuals, collectives, and the land. Whereas chullpas typically are thought to have differentiated the resource rights of competing landholding groups, the aggregation of tombs at Quilcapampa marked collective “claims to this powerful place and the arable land below it” (Jennings et al 2021:14). Elsewhere, avoiding the dead of “others” may have been just as important to community formation as “engaging with one's own ancestors” (Sharratt 2017:656).…”