Statecraft and expansionary dynamics: A Virú outpost at Huaca Prieta, Chicama Valley, Peru

Migration and maize in the Virú Valley: Understanding life histories through multi-tissue carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and strontium isotope analyses

OBJECTIVES

Stable isotope analysis can provide crucial insight into the function and development of early state-level societies on the north coast of Peru.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Multi-tissue (bone collagen, tooth enamel, hair, nail, skin, and tendon) stable isotope analyses (carbon, nitrogen, sulfur, and strontium) were conducted for 13 individuals from the lower Virú Valley.

RESULTS

Non-seasonal changes in a predominantly C₄ -based terrestrial diet, with minimal inputs of marine foods were identified. One individual (Burial 5), however, had a stable isotope signature unlike any previously found on the north coast of Peru, indicating both a large contribution of C₃ -terrestrial resources to their diet and an ⁸⁷ Sr/⁸⁶ Sr value suggestive of highland residence during childhood.

DISCUSSION

This research provides the first strong stable isotope evidence of a highland individual within a coastal burial in northern Peru, new insight into the ritual killing event at Huaca Santa Clara during the late middle horizon and supporting evidence of the importance of C₄ terrestrial resources to the developing Virú polity during the early intermediate period.

Organizational complexity and demographic scale in primary states

The relationship between organizational complexity and demographic scale is an enduring research problem at the intersection of the natural and social sciences and has far reaching implications for the study of social evolution, particularly the emergence and collapse of complex social organizations such as chiefdoms, states and empires. Anthropological models of social evolution universally assume that population growth plays a critical role in the development of organizational complexity; however, the relationship between organizational complexity and demographic scale has not been formalized and cross-culturally validated. There is a rich yet unsystematized body of diachronic organizational and demographic data describing the evolution of organizational complexity in 10 archaeologically known cases of primary state formation. Using this dataset, this essay proposes and tests a complex network model that describes state societies as discrete, self-similar, hierarchical social networks. The model accurately describes how organizational complexity and population scale in all cases. The complex network architecture of state societies suggests that further advances in our understanding of modern social organization may be found by a deeper investigation of the role of human nature in the evolution of human societies.