CHAPTER 1 Introduction

Economy, political economy, and specialization

“Specialization is the economic essence of complex society” (Earle 1987:64). Both parts of this

statement are contested by the recent archaeological literature on specialization in early complex

societies, which portrays specialization as neither an economic phenomenon nor an independent

variable in the development of social complexity. Commonplace a generation ago, the notion that

an increasingly complex division of labor and expanding volume of exchange goes hand in hand

with political integration in environmentally diverse areas is now discredited by the author of that

statement as empirically shaky (Earle 1977; 1978) and “adaptationist” (Brumfiel 1987:116). It

has been replaced by a political model, which reverses the direction of the causal arrow. In this

view, elites employ specialized crafts to further their political agendas and strengthen their politi-

cal control; politics is given primacy over economics (Brumfiel and Earle 1987:1–2; Earle

1987:64–67; Hagstrum 1995:293; Peregrine 1991:8). Cross-cultural studies have shown that con-

spicuous consumption is a universally recognized symbol of power (Trigger 1990), particularly

the consumption of hand-crafted, labor-intensive (Clark and Parry 1990:319) and hard-to-acquire,

exotic goods (Helms 1993)—the quintessential luxury items and status markers. Consequently,

prestige technologies emphasize the use of exotic materials and purposefully maximize the

amount of time and labor invested in production (Hayden 1995a:258). Patronizing the production

of such goods and handing them out to supporters and allies allows elites to convert surpluses of

staple goods into primitive wealth and thereby to avert the colossal logistical problem of distribut-

—1—
 Introduction 2

ing staple products in the absence of efficient transportation technologies (Clark and Parry

1990:323; D'Altroy and Earle 1985; Earle 1987:68–69). Thus, emerging elites and early states do

not engage in large-scale redistribution of staple goods to the general population (Brumfiel and

Earle 1987:7; Earle 1977; 1978; Sinopoli 1988:581). “Redistribution” is not about subsistence

and utilitarian goods but about wealth items as tokens of allegiance and rewards; it is a political

rather than economic phenomenon (D'Altroy 1992:68, 184) and a redistributive system is not to

be confused with a centrally planned economy.

Brumfiel and Earle call the specialists engaged in the production of wealth items under the

patronage of elites or the state “attached” as opposed to “independent specialists” who produce

items of daily use for distribution to the general populace (Brumfiel and Earle 1987:5). Sinopoli

adds a third, intermediate category: “centralized production.” This refers to the large-scale pro-

duction of subsistence and utilitarian items at a limited number of locations with some degree of

indirect state involvement (Sinopoli 1988:581). The specialists’ affiliation or context of produc-

tion is but one of four parameters (besides relative regional concentration of facilities, scale, and

intensity) that underlie Costin’s (Costin 1991:12; cf. Brumfiel and Earle 1987:5) frequently cited

eight-part typology of specialists. Moreover, attached and independent are not a priori mutually

exclusive but rather ideal types of specialization; it is conceivable that attached specialists might

at times have worked independently of their sponsors (cf. Hayashida 1995). However, no other

part of the typology has been embraced as wholeheartedly as the distinction between attached and

independent specialists because the focus of archaeological studies of specialization has been on

its political role and hence on attached specialists.

From this perspective, “[c]raft specialization […] is as much a political activity as it is an

economic or artistic one” (Peregrine 1991:8). I would go even further and say that the political

model has stripped specialization (qua attached specialization) of its economic role and embed-

ded it in the political realm. Thus, rather than placing expressions of a single phenomenon—

“specialization”—on an axis defined by its two extremes, the attached-vs.-independent classifica-

 Introduction 3

tion contrasts two distinct phenomena, two kinds of production, ultimately defined by different

demand crowds (Costin and Hagstrum 1995:620). One kind of production is social and political,

governed by political control motifs from a sponsor perspective; the other is economic, governed

by economic motifs from a producer perspective (Clark 1995:283–290; Hayashida 1995:12). To

Clark (1995:283–290), this distinction is not cross-culturally valid because demand assumes a

market economy; specialization (that is, independent specialization) is economizing behavior if it

is about increased efficiency and increased output of a standard product (Clark and Parry

1990:293; cf. Rice 1991b:440; 1996:180). And indeed, proponents of the political model retain

such an “adaptationist” stance on independent specialization:

“As predicted by the adaptationist model, independent specialization develops in re-

sponse to resource diversity and increasing population density; urbanization, market
development, and stabilized levels of supply and demand are also important. Attached
specialization develops largely as a function of elite coercive control and elite income,
that is, according to the ability of elites to command specialist production and to attract
and maintain specialist producers” (Brumfiel and Earle 1987:5–6).

Similarly, Hayashida equates the economic motivation of independent specialists with the profit

motive (Hayashida 1995:12). Therefore, independent specialization is regarded as relevant only

in mature, large-scale, state-level societies (Brumfiel and Earle 1987:1–2; Earle 1987:64–67).

Clark and Parry’s cross-cultural study provides empirical support for this position, finding the

intensity of specialization to be correlated with measures of cultural complexity, in particular the

size of the largest community (Clark and Parry 1990:309). Patronized specialization is consis-

tently correlated with less complex—agrarian, rank, or chiefdom—societies than full-time spe-

cialization, which appears in urban states (Clark and Parry 1990:321).

This is not to suggest a simple developmental line from attached to independent specializa-

tion, however. If these are distinct forms of production of distinct classes of goods for distinct

groups of consumers and purposes, they are evidently not mutually exclusive and may co-occur

in a society. Stein and Blackman even expect their coexistence in most, if not all, complex socie-

ties (Stein and Blackman 1993:53). For Mesopotamian city-states, they describe dual economies
 Introduction 4

with centralized, elite (metals and textiles for temple and palace) and noncentralized, independent

sectors (pottery) by about 2500 B. C. Even in today’s postindustrial economies, sponsorship and

philanthropy thrive and represent forms of sponsored production that enable elites to convert

“subsistence items” into prestige, status, and loyal followings. From this perspective, many mod-

ern-day academics may be regarded as “attached specialists” within a thoroughly commercialized

society!

Independent specialization, on the other hand, need not intrinsically amount to economizing,

commercial behavior because it is not necessarily about increased efficiency of production and

increased output of a standard product. Underlying this view are two common fallacies, a confu-

sion of motivation and causality and a supra-individual, teleogical “adaptationism”, the assump-

tion that institutions that persisted long enough to be registered in the archaeological record must

have been more efficient than their alternatives and hence come into being because of their supe-

rior efficiency. Logically, the origin explanation does not follow from the superior efficiency of

this form of production. Cross-culturally, craft specialization occurs among intensive cultivators

who have excess labor and insufficient land; peasants only specialize when they have to (Stark

1991:72; for potters, see Arnold 1985; Mohr Chávez 1992:68; Shimada 1994b:299–300). Thus,

even where specialization objectively increases a society’s efficiency, it may have arisen in re-

sponse to individual peasants’ existing plight rather than out of an anticipated efficiency gain for

the whole society. There are also numerous examples in the ethnographic record of independent

craft specialists that exchange their products through nonmonetary barter, often at customary ex-

change rates and with customary exchange partners to whom they may be related through kinship

ties (e. g., Mohr Chávez 1992:68; Sinopoli 1988:586; Stark 1991:68). While it is admittedly a

valid question to what extent these points apply to ancient state societies in which handicrafts

were likely less marginal than in modern ethnographic contexts, the important conclusion re-

mains: independent specialization cannot simply be equated with commercial behavior and is not

for this reason to be eliminated from consideration in modeling ancient complex societies.
 Introduction 5

However, this is precisely what the popularity of the political model has resulted in. The

economic side of specialization has been unduly neglected, to the point that it can easily go unno-

ticed in the recent archaeological literature on the topic. But were independent specialists actually

irrelevant in ancient complex societies? Are they a unique historical development of large-scale,

commercialized Old World civilizations? Who made the utilitarian craft items in New World

states and how were they organized? Did all this production take place at the domestic level?

Reviewing the literature for Mesoamerica, Feinman finds neither archaeological nor ethno-

historical evidence for nondomestic, independent craft production. Claims for non-household

production rely on evidence of high intensity from surface collections and test excavations rather

than independent measures of scale or true workshop facilities: “true workshops or factories

(large-scale manufacturing contexts outside of residential settings) have yet to be conclusively

reported for Prehispanic Mesoamerica” (Feinman 1999:97). Consequently, scale and intensity are

to be kept separate and

“[…] now is a good time to reevaluate and look more closely at the weight and strength
of the evidence for specialized production (along multiple dimensions) in […] other
world regions as well. Although I fully expect other global areas to differ markedly
form ancient Mesoamerica in the patterns of manufacture and distribution, it will be
important to know more precisely how the economies of those regions differ and to
consider the reasons why. Only when we begin to assemble these data can we hope to
understand the nature and extent of diversity in ancient systems of economic production
and exchange” (Feinman 1999:98).

The Central Andean case

Feinman’s call for comparative research into the role of specialization in ancient complex socie-

ties is not the only good reason to take on this issue in the Central Andean area (Figure 1.1).

While the textbook image of Andean socioeconomic organization is one of a Polanyian, redis-

tributive system “in which the economic process was embedded in the political institutions of a

stratified society on a massive scale” (Carrasco 1982:24–25) and specialized craft production ac-

cordingly was restricted to the manufacture of wealth items under state control, documentary evi-

dence from the Peruvian North Coast (Figure 1.2) suggests that an advanced division of labor
 Introduction 6

may have been the underlying principle of coastal social organization (Hart 1983; Netherly 1977;

1984; 1990; 1993; Ramírez-Horton 1981; 1982; Rostworowski 1961; 1970; 1977a; 1977b; 1979;

1989b; 1990). Based on this limited body of documents, one of its discoverers has proposed for a

number of years that there were two fundamentally different forms of socioeconomic organiza-

tion in the Central Andes:

“Characteristic of work on the coast was the total specialization of groups or ayllus,
with the prohibition of practicing professions outside of that indicated. To cover neces-
sities, they resorted to the barter of their products, and they had markets and fairs. Also,
the northern merchants traveled to neighboring regions, coastal as well as highland, to
realize their profits—that is, commercial exchange was the basis of yunga economy”
(Rostworowski 1977a:181–182; cf. 1979:210; 1989b:290).

Although the existence of the divergent North Coast corpus is well known in the Andeanist com-

munity, Rostworowski’s interpretation of it has decidedly remained a minority view. Explicitly or

more often implicitly “[m]any Andeanists maintain that much of the Andean highland-based

model can be successfully applied to the Prehispanic coastal societies” (Silverman 1993:343).

The root of this highland-based model is Murra’s concept of vertical ecological complemen-

tarity (Murra 1972). According to this model, to complement the local economy with nonlocal

products, each community maintained direct access to the diverse vertical tiers of the Andean to-

pography through an “archipelago” of discontinuous colonies. This organization bespeaks an An-

dean ideal of community self-sufficiency diametrically opposed to the interdependence of spe-

cialized groups, integrated by exchange mechanisms, which Rostworowski suggests for the coast

(Murra 1972:458; cf. Isbell 1997:116). Murra himself (1985) recognizes “limits and limitations”

of the verticality model. Given the stark environmental contrast between the Andean highlands

and the coast—a rather flat strip of desert sprinkled with small, oasis-like river valleys—he

somewhat hesitantly applies his model to the coast (Murra 1972:454). However, he finds small-

scale verticality between the littoral and the coca-growing chawpiyunga (Murra 1972:461) and an

equivalent to highland archipelagos in the “longitudinal control” that larger coastal polities exer-

cised over several river valleys with stretches of barren desert in between (Murra 1972:444).
 Introduction 7

Shimada’s concept of “horizontal archipelagos” elaborates upon this idea, adapting the direct-

control or discontinuous-territoriality model to the horizontal variation of resources and produc-

tion zones on the coast (Shimada 1982; 1985b; 1987; 1994c).

Shimada’s adaptation of the verticality model to conditions on the coast regards the social

response to environmental diversity as the essential feature of Andean socioeconomic organiza-

tion, even though the nature of this diversity differs greatly between highlands and coast. Stanish,

on the other hand, offers a range of indirect mechanisms, including different forms of exchange

and elite alliances, as potential alternatives to direct control within the verticality framework

(Stanish 1992:7). Empirically, in the south Peruvian Otora Valley, he finds direct control in times

of political disruption or demographic loss in the highlands, but otherwise indirect mechanisms of

zonal complementarity (Stanish 1992:168–170; cf. van Buren 1996:346–347; Sutter 2000:48).

Thus, to Stanish the perceived verticality of the Andean environment is the essence of the verti-

cality model, rather than any particular socioeconomic organization arising in response to that

environment, although he clearly still regards direct control as “uniquely Andean” (Stanish

1992:7). This view not only qualifies the uniqueness among world civilizations ascribed to the

Andean area by the direct-control model, but also shakes the bases of the essential Andean eco-

nomic and social institutions under this model:

“[Direct control of multiple vertical tiers] […] could not be achieved by an independent
household. The institution that appeared in response to this organizational challenge
was a multihousehold social unit that held its resources in common and shared labor.
This larger group could control a diversity of lands, water, and other resources; it could
allocate the labor of its members; it would share the products communally. For Murra
and his colleagues, this described the Andean ayllu. From this position it was easy for
prehistorians to infer that ayllu organization was the initial adaptive response to the An-
dean environment, predating chiefly inequality and state bureaucracy” (Isbell
1997:117).

Isbell goes on to show that the inference of the ayllu as the primeval Andean social institution

draws on uncontrolled, “homogenized analogies” to the Murra model of Inka socioeconomic or-

ganization; he proposes that the ayllu and its associated social institutions actually developed late

in Andean prehistory as a defense mechanism against expanding states (Isbell 1997:312–314).

 Introduction 8

Nevertheless, in Isbell’s postprocessual as in Murra’s view, the socioeconomic organization

of Andean states is a large-scale replica of the local community organization—only for different

reasons. For Murra, the Inka political economy followed time-honored Andean traditions, trans-

lating within-group reciprocity and the relationship between group members and the local kuraka

into a state tribute system that was based exclusively on corvée labor services performed in ex-

change for the promotion of public welfare as well as state hospitality and generosity (food and

drink) during the service periods (e. g., Murra 1972:429, 465; 1975:27, 31; 1978a:65, 97, 143,

145–146, 162, 205). For Isbell, the labor-tribute system was created in order to avoid conflicts

with the powerful anti-state institution of the ayllu by having people work on newly developed

lands and resources (Murra 1978a:143) associated with the state ancestors rather than alienating

products created on ayllu estates through the ayllu ancestors’ benevolence (Isbell 1997:312).

On the local level, Ramírez describes this system for the North Coast, to which she believes

the Murra model fully applies (Ramírez 1996:10, 164; but cf. 1981; 1982), as a classical Big Man,

aggrandizer scheme (e. g., Hayden 1990; 1995b; cf. Hastorf 1993 for a similar scenario in the

central highlands). The kuraka is an entrepreneurial manager or “chief executive” (Ramírez

1996:53) who

“[…] with vision, engineering skill and labor at his disposal could increase the area
available for farming by directing the building of additional irrigation canals and the
digging of wells” (Ramírez 1996:53).

“On his organizational, motivational, and administrative skills rested his largess and
hospitality and ultimately his reputation as a great man and leader. His generosity was a
measure of his success and the strength, productivity, and prosperity of his people”
(Ramírez 1996:21).

If he was able to rally support to the right projects the group’s prosperity would increase, allow-

ing for more generous gifts and more labor obligations in return, further enhancing his and the

group’s prosperity and possibly even attracting new group members (Ramírez 1996:21–22;

Ramírez 1998).
 Introduction 9

Ramírez sustains that in this system, most of the products of these labor contributions were

recycled back into the community (Ramírez 1996:8, 34). However, what was recycled was rather

symbolic than the heart of the local economy: “It was precisely for the festivities, banquets, and

beer; the occasional gifts of clothing, beads, and fine alpaca slippers; and, more important, the

access to land, water and other natural resources that the commoners and their lesser lords par-

ticipated in communal labor under the curaca’s direction” (Ramírez 1996:21; cf. Murra 1978a:99;

Netherly 1977:157). On this list, the only transaction of broad economic significance beyond the

symbolic flow of goods and services that helped define the political hierarchy is the granting of

access to basic resources; yet this is actually no transaction at all but a metaphoric paraphrase of

the kuraka’s elite and—from a less functionalist perspective than the one underlying the Murra

model (van Buren 1996:340)—parasitic position. The economic significance of this political sys-

tem, then, would reside in the managerial contribution of the kuraka that creates and improves the

conditions for “public well being” (Ramírez 1996:8; Netherly 1977:162–171), that is, for house-

hold production units to succeed. Indeed, Ramírez describes the kuraka as a sort of “salaried

manager” who was granted lands by the community as a perquisite of the office that freed him

from subsistence work and allowed him to dedicate himself to his administrative tasks (Ramírez

1996:50; Ramírez-Horton 1985:428–431; Netherly 1977:182).

On the state level, the connection between political economy and economic basis is even

more remote because here, administrative competence benefits an oppressive state apparatus

rather than the local economy. As Murra puts it, the Inka state absorbed the “surplus” productiv-

ity of a self-sufficient population and invested this surplus in feeding the army, those who per-

formed labor services to the state, or of the imperial family, trying to gain, at the same time, the

loyalty of the “beneficiaries” (Murra 1975:42). Murra makes it abundantly clear that there was

virtually no distribution of goods from state warehouses back to the contributing public (Murra

1975:28, 42; 1978a:177, 194–196; D'Altroy 1992:132). Thus, the economic process was far from

embedded in the political institutions (contra Carrasco 1982:24–25); rather, a parasitic political
 Introduction 10

economy sat on top of and fed on largely intact, self-sufficient local economies (cf. D'Altroy

1992:152).

The place of craft specialists in this system was, as the political model predicts for societies

on significantly smaller scale (cf. previous section), exclusively in the political economy. The

state, as well as local kuraka, employed attached specialists for the production of elaborate items

in the sponsors’ corporate style as well as more mundane goods for use by members of the state

apparatus (D'Altroy and Bishop 1990; D'Altroy, et al. 1994; 1998; Hayashida 1994; 1995; 1998;

1999; Morris 1974; Murra 1978b; Spurling 1993). Specialists working on behalf of the state were

usually permanently relocated to state installations (Hayashida 1998). Similarly, ethnic lords in

the Ecuadorian highlands patronized a limited number of long-distance traders; their role in the

Inka political economy is not entirely clear (Salomon 1977-78; 1986; 1987). The fancy or exotic

goods produced or procured by these specialists—particularly cloth (Murra 1962)—served as

symbols of power and distribution to ethnic lords and other subjects as signs of favor (Morris

1995 848). In contrast to similar systems of “wealth finance” elsewhere (D'Altroy and Earle

1985:188, 193–195), conversion of such items into subsistence goods was hampered by the ab-

sence of markets (but cf. Hartmann 1968; 1971).

Production of craft items for daily use by the general populace must have occurred on the

household level and accordingly little is known about it (D'Altroy 1992:132). Rostworowski

(1989a) has published an ethnohistoric example from Canta in the central highlands where the

entire community during the agricultural off-seasons would move between a number of settle-

ments, one for each specialized task, engage there in the production of cloth, pottery, sandals, and

possibly charqui, and then abandon the specialized settlement until the next production cycle.

Rostworowski (1989a:13) believes that this pattern was not unique to Canta, but widespread

across the highlands. The interesting point in the present context is less the curious changes of

location than the fact that the entire community would temporarily switch occupations. No spe-

cialists were involved in the production of simple consumer goods.

 Introduction 11

A rare archaeological case of an excavated highland craft production facility is the Ch’iji

Jawira barrio of Tiwanaku (Rivera Casavanovas 1994). Janusek (1999; cf. Franke 1995) interprets

the ceramic craft at Ch’iji Jawira somewhat vaguely as a semi-independent specialization. Pro-

duction took place at some distance from Tiwanaku’s elite core in “residential workshop contexts

organized as suprahousehold compounds and barrios” (Janusek 1999:124). However, the evi-

dence for exchange of Ch’iji Jawira pottery with other Tiwanaku barrios is weak; for the most

part, exchange is inferred from the failure of reconnaissance and limited excavations to locate

other ceramic production facilities at Tiwanaku (Janusek 1999:114–115). Indeed, Janusek’s em-

phasis on the stylistic differences between pottery assemblages from the various Tiwanaku bar-

rios argues against production for exchange and in favor of local consumption in the Ch’iji Jawira

barrio itself.

In sum, there is neither ethnohistorical nor archaeological evidence for independent craft

specialization in the highlands; specialization there belongs entirely in the realm of the political

economy and has no place in the economic basis. Under the Murra model, such an economic ba-

sis of generalized, local economies with little horizontal exchange among them and a flow of the

only “surplus commodity” available—labor—from the basis into the political economy super-

structure, is the characteristic Andean response to a highly varied, vertically organized landscape

and resource distribution.

The Peruvian North Coast

Isbell (1997:113 et passim) has sharply criticized the widespread application of the Murra model

across space and time in the Andes as an uncritical “homogenized analogy.” His criticism seems

particularly pertinent to the coast, not only because coastal geographic conditions differ so greatly

from those in the highlands, but more importantly because the Murra model does not easily ac-

commodate the ethnohistoric evidence for an advanced division of labor on the coast (see previ-

ous section and for details Chapter 2). Examples of “homogenized analogies” to Inka socioeco-
 Introduction 12

nomic organization abound on the Peruvian North Coast. Moseley’s (1975) labor tax model of

Moche segmentary construction is a case in point, being closely based on a cavalier analogy to

the Inka mita system. Since his model accounts at best for one of several patterns of North Coast

segmentary construction (Shimada 1997a:66, 85) alternative approaches are not only logically

possible, but clearly required for understanding the organization of North Coast monumental con-

struction. Similarly, the simple proximity of three isolated Chimú centers to field systems

(Keatinge and Day 1973:290) or the absence of resident support populations at North Coast ad-

ministrative centers (Mackey and Klymyshyn 1990:218)—a single trait out of a whole package

that defines the Inka mita—are deemed sufficient to suggest that these centers functioned the

same way as Inka administrative centers. If Inka analogies even routinely define what constitutes

material evidence of socioeconomic institutions—for example, chicha-serving vessels, which

played an important role in the hospitality the Inka state extended to its workers, become evi-

dence of Chimú administration under the labor-tax model (Klymyshyn 1987:99; Mackey and

Klymyshyn 1990:218)—then archaeological research can hardly fail to produce carbon copies of

Inka social organization.

Like archaeologists and their analogies, several of the ethnohistorians who published the di-

vergent coastal historical record sustain that by and large, coastal socioeconomic organization

was the same as in the highlands. Their accounts of late Prehispanic North Coast socioeconomic

organization accommodate the historical records that point to an advanced division of labor as

indicative of attached specialization under elite or state sponsorship, dismiss them altogether, or

incorporate them as largely alien, disarticulated elements. Netherly (1977:23) on the one hand

finds the vertical archipelago model applicable to the North Coast, if supplemented by wide-

spread exchange networks. On the other hand, her work on North Coast political structure shows

that the human populations that Andean states integrated into organizational networks (Netherly

1993:13) were territorially based (Netherly 1993:18) and the essentially contiguous resource dis-

tribution of the North Coast favored the establishment of compact territories rather than discon-
 Introduction 13

tinuous archipelagos, a tendency further intensified by irrigation agriculture (Netherly 1977:125).

Despite these differences, higher population densities, and the widespread exchange networks

between specialized groups, she reconstructs a “redistributive system” closely following the

Murra model (Netherly 1977:208). “Redistribution” refers to a labor tribute system along Inka

lines in which chiefly “hospitality” and “generosity” were the mechanisms of access to labor

(Netherly 1977:211–214). The specialists, in her view (Netherly 1977:252; cf. Ramírez-Horton

1981:295–296; Ramírez 1996: Fig. 1), were part of the redistributional sphere centering upon the

lord and the state, although there was also horizontal exchange. How the horizontal exchange

networks fit in remains unanswered. The text of Ramírez’s 1996 book simply does not discuss the

North Coast specialists anymore (cf. Ramírez-Horton 1981; 1982) and cautiously but explicitly

denounces Rostworowski’s proposition of two fundamentally different forms of socioeconomic

organization in the Central Andes (Ramírez 1996:10, 164). Ramírez’s account of North Coast

social organization follows Murra so closely that it was used in the previous section to summarize

the Murra model.

Netherly and Ramírez grapple with the distinction between attached and independent spe-

cialists and political economy and economic basis; following Murra’s lead, they assign to all spe-

cialists an attached role in the political economy. Late Prehispanic North Coast elites unques-

tionably utilized the services of attached specialists; not only historical records, but also archaeo-

logical evidence from the Chimú capital of Chan Chan (Topic 1977; 1982; 1990) and Shimada’s

analyses of metal artifacts and fine pottery from Middle Sicán elite tombs at the Sicán Precinct

(Shimada and Merkel 1993; Shimada and Montenegro 1993; Shimada and Griffin 1994; Shimada

1995; 1996; Shimada, et al. 1997) make this abundantly clear. Other groups of specialists, how-

ever, who were neither service personnel nor makers of luxury goods, in the historical documents

do not appear to be associated with elites or the state. Thus, historian Elizabeth Hart (1983:255)

classifies North Coast specialists into attached vs. independent and full-time vs. part-time groups
 Introduction 14

and observes that most of the full-time specialists who had no lands to support themselves be-

longed in the independent category (Hart 1983:268).

Can these independent specialists be reconciled with the Murra model? Was the coastal po-

litical economy the same as in the highlands, but built on a different infrastructural base com-

posed of specialist groups producing and exchanging specialized, utilitarian goods? Do the his-

torical documents describe a hybrid system that incorporated elements of a preexisting, more

complex coastal socioeconomic organization into a simpler highland-based model, closer to

forms of organization typically found in middle-range societies (cf. D'Altroy 1992:19, 218; Mor-

ris 1993:37; Schaedel 1985b:162)?

Given the limited and contentious ethnohistoric record for the Inka period and the unavail-

ability of any written records for the most pertinent pre-Inka periods, these questions can only be

addressed through archaeological research. A single explicit archaeological test of the ethnohis-

toric record of coastal specialists has been performed to date (also cf. Marcus 1987). Sandweiss’s

(1992) excavations at the seashore fishing village of Lo Demás in the Chincha Valley confirmed

much of the historical information (Rostworowski 1970) on common fisher folk, but found some

inconsistencies regarding the elite segment of the population (Sandweiss 1992:145). The alleged

specialized fishermen were indeed almost exclusively dedicated to fishing and acquired all plant

resources except cotton, which was crucial for their trade, by exchange (Sandweiss 1992:135,

143–144). The discrepancies that Sandweiss (1992:2) finds between the archaeological and his-

torical records are relatively easily reconciled. Considering that even in today’s highly specialized

economy most of us take care of our own households, it comes as no surprise that Inka-period

Chincha fisher folk performed domestic chores in addition to fishing. Sandweiss himself

(1992:12) points out that the historical documents mention practitioners of other crafts attached to

the households of specialist lords and interprets the non-fishing specialists in the Lo Demás lord’s

household as such. Thus, the presence of specialists other than fisher folk in the fishing village

does not contradict the historical record. Finally, that the fisher folk’s lord did not personally en-
 Introduction 15

gage in fishing is in disagreement with a literal reading of the historical record. However, free-

dom from daily subsistence chores is an essential perquisite of elite status; the kuraka in the high-

land system did not himself work in the fields either, but was given land and access to subjects’

labor so that he would be free to fulfill his administrative tasks (see previous section). When a

lord, particularly one of higher rank, in colonial court records introduces himself as “lord of the

fishermen of …” and a fisherman himself, he may simply be identifying with his group, which is

made up of all fisher folk and defined by this occupation. It is hard to conceive, for example, of

the second-highest ranking lord in Chicama, who was the head of the fishermen of Malabrigo

(Hart 1983:240), going out on a raft to fish for a living.

Sandweiss’s test, then, confirmed the historical record for Chincha to the point that the exca-

vation of a single, Inka-period fishing village could confirm it. However, as Sandweiss (1992:5)

himself points out, the historical record needs to be tested against the pre-Inka archaeological re-

cord. Moreover, his focus on a single site allowed only limited conclusions as to the regional dis-

tribution of specialists’ products. Finally, the test site is on the south coast for which the historical

record suggests a substantially less complex division of labor than for the North Coast. Clearly,

then, an archaeological study of the pre-Inka socioeconomic organization of a local North Coast

polity is called for.

Understanding the socioeconomic organization of a polity and the role attached and/or inde-

pendent specialists may have played in it amounts to working out both the organization of craft

production and distribution and the political structure of the region. The polity chosen here for

such a study is the historical Cinto on the north bank of the Lambayeque River. In order to facili-

tate the archaeological definition of the Cinto polity as well as insights into political and eco-

nomic structures on a regional level, the study area also includes part of the neighboring polity of

Túcume. The Lambayeque polities are commonly believed to have had the most advanced divi-

sion of labor and craft specialization of the North Coast in late Prehispanic times (Pozorski

1987:119; J. R. Topic 1990:166, 171; Topic and Moseley 1985:164). Moreover, there has been a
 Introduction 16

long-standing archaeological debate about the regional political integration of the Lambayeque

Sphere before its annexation by the Chimú state.

Ideally, several of the specialized crafts mentioned in the written sources should be included

in the study. This approach, however, would require the excavation of multiple production sites,

some of which, depending on the crafts practiced, may be invisible to surface archaeology. What

is more, even if such sites were to be found, their inclusion would result in an unmanageably

large field and analytical operation. My regional survey located a Chimú pottery workshop and a

Middle Sicán metalworking site. Thus, I focus primarily on the archaeologically most visible

craft, pottery, during the Chimú period and to a limited extent on copper-alloy metallurgy during

the Middle Sicán period. Both the Chimú ceramic workshop and the Middle Sicán metalworking

site were horizontally excavated. Pottery has the additional advantage of being the single most

ubiquitous surface artifact category at all survey sites, facilitating distribution studies. Given its

restriction to one craft per time period, this work should properly be regarded as the first step of a

long-term research program.

Since the coastal ethnohistoric record provides the point of departure and the hypotheses for

the present study, this record is to be tested first against the archaeological record of the last pe-

riod before the Inka conquest, i. e., the Chimú period. If this test is successful, hypotheses devel-

oped from the written record may then be pushed as far back in time as the archaeological record

will allow. It might be objected that if pre-Inka coastal socioeconomic organization substantially

differed from the highland model, the Inka as an intrusive highland power might have signifi-

cantly altered the coastal organization and the altered organization would be reflected in the his-

torical documents. However, the coastal historical record clearly deviates from the highland re-

cord and Inka influence on the North Coast was short lived (Ramírez-Horton 1990:519). The

Chimú state was balkanized and local lords were made directly responsible to the Inka (Rowe

1948:45; Netherly 1988:120–121; Ramírez 1996:7); this indirect rule was common practice in

Andean states, which were hierarchically organized aggregations of regional states (Netherly
 Introduction 17

1977:3, 147; 1990:479; 1993:13, 31; Rostworowski 1990:448, 457; Rowe 1946:260–261). Since

the North Coast was probably administered from centers in the adjacent highlands (Hyslop

1984:53; 1990:250–251; Netherly 1988:115), the Inka occupation might easily go unnoticed

(Hyslop 1984:40; Kosok 1965:179; Schreiber 1992:62). Archaeologically, this is clearly the case

in the study area, which includes a single group of Inka sites associated with the north-south trunk

road and has failed to produce one provincial Inka style potsherd.

Thesis overview
The remainder of the thesis is divided into nine chapters that form two blocks. Chapter 2–Chapter

5 provide further background to the study, its research design, and methods. Expanding on the

discussion in this introduction, Chapter 2 reviews the ethnohistoric and archaeological contexts of

our research questions, fleshing out the hypotheses to be tested against the Lambayeque archaeo-

logical record. The research design for this test is developed in Chapter 3. Following a sketch of

relevant features of the Lambayeque Valley’s geographical setting and a discussion of archaeo-

logical site preservation in Chapter 4, Chapter 5 describes the practical research procedures and

classification schemes applied both in the field and in the lab.

Chapter 6–Chapter 9 present the results of the archaeological test, first (Chapter 6–Chapter

8) for the Chimú period and then (Chapter 9), moving backwards in time, for the Late and Middle

Sicán periods. Chapter 6 uses settlement and intra-site data to understand the region’s political

structure during the Chimú period and the role of the four major Chimú “administrative centers”

in the study area. A valley-wide unified settlement system during the Middle Sicán period gave

way to two local polities incorporated into the Chimú state and governed through a mixture of

indirect rule and territorial, military control. Intra-site analysis of the four Chimú administrative

and elite-residential centers, strategically placed along the valley’s principal irrigation canal,

shows that despite the Chimú state’s apparent interest in agricultural resources, its centers were

not involved in the mobilization of agricultural labor. Chapter 7 examines a horizontally exca-
 Introduction 18

vated Chimú pottery workshop as an in-depth case study of the organization of craft production.

Chapter 8 draws on technological, stylistic and chemical analyses of pottery from this workshop

as well as survey sites to untangle the distribution of Pampa de Burros products. Chapter 9 ad-

dresses the settlement system of the preceding Late and Middle Sicán periods and briefly presents

evidence for Middle Sicán metalworking at the Pampa de Burros site. Both at the Chimú pottery

workshop and, judging from the preliminary evidence, the Middle Sicán metal workshop, special-

ized, large-scale craft production took place in dedicated facilities outside domestic settings. Craft

specialists were organized in multi-family household groups residing in self-contained, multi-

room compounds. State and elites did not interfere in the production and distribution of consumer

items from the Pampa de Burros.

The inversion of the time arrow admittedly results in a number of awkward passages in

Chapter 6 when the analysis of the Chimú settlement system needs to refer to the preceding Sicán

patterns, which are not discussed until Chapter 9. This is the price of having the structure of pres-

entation reflect the logic of the research design. As the ratio of space dedicated to the Chimú and

Sicán periods indicates, the emphasis in this thesis is clearly on the Chimú period. The reason for

this imbalance is that the Chimú data set is particularly rich and the Sicán data have not yet been

analyzed in as much detail as the Chimú data. However, since the Middle Sicán data set from the

Pampa de Burros adds both temporal depth and a second craft to the specialization model pro-

posed, it was deemed important to include at least a preview of these data in Chapter 9.

I conclude (Chapter 10) that on the North Coast, attached and non-monetized, noncommer-

cial, barter-based, independent specialization coexisted side by side for at least 500 years in vari-

ous social formations that display both features of middle-range and of state societies. Independ-

ent specialization represents an economic track toward complexity parallel to the political path,

on which recent studies of (attached) specialization have exclusively focused.

Following the general conclusion, three appendices present reference material and supple-

mentary data to accompany the chapter discussions. Appendix A summarizes the architectural
 Introduction 19

and pottery sequences on which our settlement dating is based. Appendix B reproduces the code-

book developed for recording Lambayeque Valley pottery data; throughout the text, codes de-

fined in this codebook are used to describe pottery features. Finally, Appendix C presents tabular

data and, where available, field maps of the 394 sites located in the study area.