Desperate Times Call for Familiar Measures: The Embodiment of Social Norms During Sociopolitical Transition in the Ancient Andes

Abstract:

How do communities manage periods of political, economic, and social instability? Do they innovate, or return to tradition? Based on bioarchaeological and isotopic analyses of a population of individuals who were buried in Huanca Sancos, Ayacucho, Peru between 700–1400 CE, I argue for a response that is simultaneously neither and both. Around the end of the first millennium CE, this community contended with two major upheavals: the dissolution of the Wari Empire and the onset of the Medieval Climate Anomaly. Between the imperial and post-imperial era, sex-based disparities in numerous embodied phenomena, including maize consumption, violence, migration, and head shaping, became more pronounced, suggesting a crystallization of gendered norms. In this period of instability, tightly maintaining social roles may have been an attempt to mitigate the uncertainty that permeated other parts of society. However, while these behaviors had their roots in earlier time periods, this instantiation was as much new and reactive as it was timeless and enduring.

Anna is a PhD candidate in Anthropology at Cornell University and the Scientific Director of the Proyecto de Investigación Bio-Arqueológico de Sancos. Her research has been funded by the Wenner Gren Foundation, the National Science Foundations, and the Cornell Atkinson Center for Sustainability.