Shifting Power and Prestige in the Ayacucho Valley, Peru's South Central Highlands: Materiality of Huarpa and Wari Ceramics

No society has stayed predominant in history. The locus of power and prestige has always shifted from one place to another. This dissertation deals with this inquiry in an archaeological context and, as a case study, focuses on two roughly contemporaneous sites---Nawimpuquio and Conchopata---located in the Ayacucho Valley, Peru's south central highlands. Drawing on the antecedent studies at the sites and in the local region, the following proposition may be advanced: before Wari established supremacy as the capital of an expansionist state, the locus of power and prestige shifted from Nawimpuquio to Conchopata between the late part of the Early Intermediate Period (EIP) and the early part of the Middle Horizon (MH). Importantly, this shift corresponds to the transformation of the native cultures from Huarpa to Wari in the Ayacucho Valley. In order to evaluate this proposition, the present study introduces a "three-tiered approach to the Nawimpuquio and Conchopata ceramics" consisting of stylistic, paste-compositional and interpretive analyses. The stylistic analysis (Tier 1) identifies underlying patterns in the ceramic assemblages and connects them to the functions of selected architectural spaces at both sites. The paste-compositional analysis (Tier 2) aims to hypothetically reconstruct ceramic production and use at the sites during this transition. Combining these results and interpretations in Tier 3, I argue that during the late part of the EIP Nawimpuquio may have served as a pilgrimage center in the southern end of the Ayacucho Valley and Conchopata probably existed under this ideology. At the beginning of the MH, however, the directionality of influence was inverted; now, Conchopata came to exert ideologies of power and prestige over Nawimpuquio. Resultantly, Nawimpuquio's material culture, as represented in its ceramic assemblages, appears to have been controlled by Conchopata. Lastly, this study examines several museum collections of late Nasca pottery so as to reconsider the cultural contact and stylistic interaction between Ayacucho and Peru's south coast from the late EIP to the early MH. I suggest that the rise of Conchopata at the onset of the MH was perhaps brought about by its successful integration of Nasca's cultural prestige into its ceramic production.