7
Households and Urban Inequality in Fourteenth-Century Peru
David Pacifico
Household archaeology never gets old because it was never new. Since at least the work of Johann Winckelmann at Pompeii in the eighteenth century (Ceram 1979, 13) and Louis Henry Morgan in the United States in the nineteenth century (Thomas 2000), anthropologists and social archaeologists have expressed a keen interest in houses and households. Change comes with respect to the nature of those interests: the kinds of questions anthropologists and archaeologists ask and the kinds of analyses they conduct on houses, domestic assemblages, and household residents. Changing approaches to houses and households reflect the ways anthropologists believe household archaeology can inform us about the broader anthropological topics the field is currently examining.
This chapter reports on research conducted in a fourteenth-century residential district, called Sector B South, of the city of El Purgatorio, capital of the Casma Polity, on the north-central coast of Peru. Research conducted in Sector B South examined how houses and households contributed to the nature of social diversity at El Purgatorio, especially with respect to hierarchy and inequality, among nonelites. A neighborhood archaeology approach here is based on household archaeology but provided considerably more comparative data than would have been collected in a more focused household archaeology strategy. Consequently, the commoner district at El Purgatorio contributes to our understanding of how houses, households, and the quotidian practices of commoners affect the social construction of cities and urban settlements (sensu Smith 2003). Specific to Andean archaeology, the character of commoner social diversity at El Purgatorio is a critical element in understanding the Casma State itself and, therefore, the history, politics, and culture of the north-central coast of Peru in the later Middle Horizon and Late Intermediate Periods. El Purgatorio is a key site for understanding the sociopolitical history of the North Coast and its relationship to the South Coast, Central Highlands, and areas further north because it was a complex settlement at the center of a polity with wide regional reach, it had a long urban history, and it resides within a spatial context of a deeper history of complex settlements in the Casma Valley stretching back to 1500 BC (Pozorski and Pozorski 2008).1 An understanding of commoners at El Purgatorio also provides a unique opportunity to examine the interrelationship of urbanism, households, and everyday life in a longer-term perspective. Indeed, as the world is increasingly urban (Davis 2004) and industrialized countries like the United States are increasingly unequal in terms of material wealth (US Census Bureau 2014), the archaeology of urban households provides a much-needed long-term perspective on social changes experienced in our contemporary world.
From Sector B South we learn that fourteenth-century commoner households were diverse in terms of social status and household configuration. This finding complicates traditional approaches to household archaeology (e.g., Aldenderfer 1993; Stanish 1989; Wilk and Rathje 1982), which tend to view the household as the smallest repeating social unit as indicated by the smallest repeating domestic architectural unit. This traditional approach is important for identifying households but deemphasizes the diverse forms households may take within a single society or settlement. The discovery of diverse house and household forms among commoners at El Purgatorio supports more recent approaches to household archaeology in the Andes (e.g., Janusek 2004, 2009; Van Gijseghem 2001) and Mesoamerica (e.g., Robin 2004; Yaeger 2000), which assert the diversity of households and the complexity of everyday life in preindustrial societies.
Findings from El Purgatorio support the idea that there is a core set of repeating architectural units representative of houses and the households that occupied them; but these findings also demand that we recognize the multiple constellations in which these elements may form, constituting various household forms typical of a single society. In Sector B, storage, production, and living spaces were configured into several morphological constellations comprising the houses of low-, middle-, and high-status commoners. We should not be surprised, however, by these finds, given that ethnographic research (e.g., Horne 1982; Lobo 1992) has frequently demonstrated the diversity and dynamic nature of households that may exist within a single society. In El Purgatorio’s commoner residential district, Sector B South, it appears that there were three different household configurations, each associated with a different commoner status. Low-status and high-status urban commoners lived in smaller residences (though built with different materials) occupied by small households. In contrast, middle-status commoners lived in sprawling patio compound households occupied by numerous small (perhaps nuclear) families. Together, these residents comprised a broad middle class in the Casma State social landscape. Elites lived in the monumental and semi-monumental districts of El Purgatorio, as evidenced by the size and material elaboration of their residences. The lowest-status Casma State residents likely resided in the seemingly countless smaller and less elaborate settlements stretching up- and downriver from El Purgatorio. Privileged proximity to the urban core—tempered by segregation to the monumental district’s precipitous hillsides—suggests that the residents of Sector B South composed a differentiated middleclass of nonelites, or commoners.
The results of research in Sector B South are significant in a couple of broad ways. First, they suggest that preindustrial and prehistoric urbanism share fundamental and significant characteristics with modern urbanism and therefore can serve as legitimate case studies in broader considerations of contemporary issues. Specifically, the relationship between urbanism and material inequalities as experienced by households and families is a common theme in both ancient and contemporary cities. This theme deserves robust examination and comparison for positive application in the present. For example, preindustrial case studies may be compared to contemporary cases of urban “death” (e.g., Detroit), hypermigration (Lima and Trujillo, Peru), revitalization (Barcelona), and rapid urban establishment (e.g., Brasilia, Shenzen) in order to identify the results of these urban processes on household form, material wealth, access to space and other resources, and the experiences and quality of quotidian life. Research at El Purgatorio serves as a starting point by analyzing differential access to basic resources, including building materials, living space, staples, secondary necessities, luxury foodstuffs, and other portable material goods. The dynamics of household and family change, redistribution of wealth, and the tradeoffs of urbanism are highlighted by research in Sector B South. Future research in the valley will help bring those dynamics into clearer articulation with modern case studies. What is clear now, however, is that social hierarchy, material inequalities, economic productivity, and household diversity are interrelated at El Purgatorio. In a longer-term perspective, then, we might anticipate changes to household form and inequality during processes of urbanism, including urban growth, development, and decline (for example, Susser 1999; Venkatesh 2014). Consequently, city planners, architects, and policymakers may have access to longer-term perspectives on urbanism and its effects. These perspectives may then help develop more informed urban plans and policies.
At El Purgatorio, it appears that household form and material inequality were interrelated. They may also have been reconfigured during the rapid settlement of Sector B South. In-migration was likely motivated by the promise of secure access to foodstuffs and to sacred spaces—especially in the context of Chimú expansion to the north. Preliminary examination of periurban sites suggests that many are less densely populated than El Purgatorio. This preliminary comparison between El Purgatorio and hinterland sites raises the question of whether some households lost access to physical space when joining the dense urban landscape. Proximity to resources at El Purgatorio almost certainly meant proximity to the watchful eye of administrators and submission to labor taxes. Broader access to certain resources, gained by urban migration, may then also have led to the creation or exacerbation of other kinds of material and consequent social inequalities.
Inequality is one of the most pressing issues faced by both academics and the public. Anthropologists know that inequality has different configurations and consequences in different contexts. Consequently, archaeologists can engage in broadly meaningful discussions with the public by providing long-term and cross-cultural perspectives on inequality (e.g., Smith 2010a). Here I examine the configuration and consequences of material and social inequality among commoner households in an ancient urban neighborhood in Peru.
The research I report here was a component of the El Purgatorio Archaeological Project (PAEP) directed by Dr. Melissa Vogel (Clemson) between 2004 and 2011. I conducted excavations using a “neighborhood archaeology” (Pacifico 2014) strategy to examine the social organization of commoners and the significance of their everyday lives and domestic activities in the social production of El Purgatorio, capital of the Casma Polity or State. Neighborhood archaeology is a methodological and theoretical approach that builds upon the foundations of household archaeology and the archaeology of communities (e.g., Canuto and Yaeger 2000; Inomata and Coben 2006). Neighborhood archaeology examines multiple houses and households as well as their spatial setting as an interrelated complex of context and content (see Hutson 2016; Pacifico and Truex 2019; Smith and Novic 2012; Stone 1987 as extensive examples). Neighborhood areas, houses, and rooms are simultaneously the containers for and content of archaeological data. Neighborhood archaeology synthesizes spatial and artifact data to provide a more detailed understanding of ancient social life than is possible through household archaeology, though it tends to trade depth of detail at the household level for broader detail at the settlement level.
Here I argue that commoners at El Purgatorio were a complex, stratified population. In the context of fourteenth-century El Purgatorio, household configuration and social status were interrelated because different household configurations meant different levels of participation in citywide and neighborhood-focused redistributive and labor economies that focused on feasting (especially chicha [maize beer]). Larger households could provide more labor, were more productive, and therefore became “wealthier” in terms of domestic architecture and space. The wealthiest households were affiliated with El Purgatorio’s elites, who lived in the city’s monumental district. Smaller households provided less labor, were less productive, and therefore were “poorer” and of lower status with respect to these metrics. However, access to protein and agricultural goods was in some ways uniform among commoner Casmeños. Residential space, as well as the comfort and permanence it provided, were variables related to wealth, status, and household configuration. However, nutritional staples were widely available and equitably distributed among commoners at El Purgatorio (Pacifico 2014).
These conclusions raise additional hypotheses that will be addressed by future research in the Casma Valley and into the Casma State. First, because El Purgatorio’s commoner residential districts were rapidly occupied in the fourteenth century, new residents may have already been related to one another by idioms of kinship and status that resonate with historical and ethnohistoric models of the ayllu (e.g., Allen 2002; Mayer 2002; Wernke 2013). If this is the case, then villages and hamlets in the Casma Valley hinterland were characterized by significant social and material hierarchies. If this were the case, then those hierarchies may have been reconfigured and concretized in the sociospatial construction of El Purgatorio’s commoner neighborhoods. Potential material differences in terms of access to foodstuffs were equalized by the redistributive economy organized by El Purgatorio’s elites and evidenced by artifacts found in Sector B South. Certainty about long-term change of Casma State society requires additional exploration of the hinterland (currently being conducted by the author). However, at present, research into El Purgatorio’s commoners suggests that the nature of the Casma State was likely an economic apparatus for organizing the production and redistribution of foodstuffs bolstered by periodic rituals involving the massive consumption of chicha (and other things, like marine mollusks) in both residential and monumental districts.
Cities, Social Diversity, and Households
Cities and social diversity have been conceptually linked at least since V. Gordon Childe’s (1950) Marxian evolutionist approach, and so “diversity” often reads as “rigid social hierarchy.” In a Childean schema, cities emerged when productive surplus allowed certain members of society to cease working and begin administering the works and products of others (see also Rousseau 1997[1755]). This separation of labor forms is associated with the development of cities in agrarian landscapes and the formation of permanent states with legible symbolic systems for representing and administering production (Childe 1950, 9). Alternative configurations for conceptualizing urban social diversity include structural-functional differentiation (Wheatley 1971); diversity in religion, social values, and ethnicity (Butzer 2008); positions in multilevel networks (Smith 2006); and role in long-distance trade (Hansen 2008), among other schema. These diverse schemas suggest that to understand urbanism and social diversity, an approach is needed that is flexible enough to be context-specific but sufficiently concrete to provide for cross-cultural comparison. Household identity and neighborhood role are one such approach in that together they show how social diversity was configured in the very domain in which most people spent much of their time (Keith 2003, 58).
Andean urbanism has largely been understood from the perspective of economic specialization, intensive settlement nucleation, and the concomitant social structures that emerge out of economic specialization in intensive settlements (Bawden 1982; Brennan 1982; Burger 1991, 293). This approach posits that Andean urban settlements emerged sometime between the late first millennium BC and early first millennium AD. Others (e.g., Pozorski and Pozorski 2008) argue that urban societies existed as early as the second millennium BC and indeed right in the Casma Valley, in the shadow of what would become El Purgatorio and Sector B South. The argument over the emergence of cities—and therefore urbanism’s link to complexity—is founded on the belief that cities and social hierarchy are cogenetic: that they arise simultaneously. In this argument, cities are large, complex settlements with diverse functions within a wider social landscape.
Rather than disputing the genesis of social complexity and cities, an alternative approach to understanding inequality in a long-term perspective is to consider inequality to be a fundamental aspect of human society at all scales. In the context of cities, which I argue can be thought of as intensified human settlements (Pacifico 2014), we might rather ask if and how inequality was configured and how it changed during urban growth, development, and evaporation (not to mention collapse). At El Purgatorio, a capital city by many accounts, my research began this process by exploring if and how social diversity was configured among the commoner residents.
This question was particularly important because leading models of Prehispanic Andean cities (e.g., Kolata 1997, though see Kolata 2013 for an updated approach; Makowski 2008; Von Hagen and Morris 1998) suggest that they were political projects with few inhabitants compared to modern cities, limited social diversity, and no social factions. While the core of this political model holds up at El Purgatorio, its details require revision; El Purgatorio appears to have been a political project directed by strong central powers, but it was also internally diverse. Internal economic and social diversity led to multiple loci of peripheral power in commoner households. To examine social diversity in its various forms (e.g., social hierarchy, material inequality, occupational specialization, ethnic diversity), architectural mapping, surface artifact collection, and systematic excavation were used to compare the material evidence for social diversity among numerous households inhabiting El Purgatorio’s commoner residential district, Sector B South.
Results from Sector B South suggest a model of the household defined by people sharing a residence, productive pursuits, and a sense of commonality organized around a kinship idiom (see also Kenoyer 2008; Stone 2008 for allied approaches). This model was selected because it appears to correspond to significant social units as actually practiced in El Purgatorio’s commoner residential district. Analysis of the standing architecture, described in more detail below, revealed a number of distinct structures with evidence of residential activity that linked the co-residing inhabitants in subsistence and social activities. As co-residents sharing subsistence and social activities, households in Sector B South support the composite definition of the household—one that encompasses demographic, spatial, practical, and conceptual elements for locating households, their residents, their significance, and their experiences in the processes of urbanism.
The Late Intermediate Period, El Purgatorio, and Sector B South
El Purgatorio is a very large archaeological site in the lower Casma Valley (figure 7.1), about 80 km due west of the highland center Huaraz and the nearby site of Chavín de Huantar. Located at the furthest reach of the foothills of the Cordillera Negra, the Casma Valley was an advantageous route from sea to sierra to selva. El Purgatorio is situated in the Casma Valley at the base and up the flanks of the mountain Cerro Mucho Malo, which rises over 700 masl (meters above sea level), so it is within sight and walking distance of the Early Intermediate Period ritual fortress Chankillo and the preceramic center of Pampa de las Llamas–Moxeke. El Purgatorio was identified in the 1930s by Julio Tello (1956), visited by Donald Collier (1962) and Donald E. Thompson (1964, 1974) in the 1950s, observed by Rosa Fung Pineda and Carlos Williams León (1977) in the 1970s, and surveyed by David Wilson (1995) in the 1990s. The PAEP began the first systematic investigations of the site in 2004 (Vogel and Vilcherrez 2004). Mapping, surface artifact collection, excavations, and a number of laboratory analyses have revealed that El Purgatorio was settled as early as the eighth century AD (Vogel and Pacifico 2011). Yet the massive commoner residential district was only occupied in the very late thirteenth through very early fifteenth centuries (Pacifico 2014; Vogel et al. 2012). These dating schemes mean that while the monumental and semimonumental sectors had long lives spanning the eighth through the fourteenth centuries AD, the commoner residential district—which likely housed the majority of the city’s inhabitants—was built, occupied, and abandoned all within about 120 years ranging from AD 1295 to 1405 (Pacifico 2014, 211). This rapid immigration, construction, and abandonment of Sector B South highlights the need to focus on urbanism as a process of social reconfiguration, a process that can be best understood at the household level and at the level of articulated households: the neighborhood.
Figure 7.1. Location of El Purgatorio on Peru’s North Coast
El Purgatorio consists of four sectors defined by topographical separation and characterized by different forms of architecture and sector layouts (figure 7.2). Sectors A, B, and C were contemporaneously inhabited during the final century or so of El Purgatorio’s occupation, as is demonstrated by numerous radiocarbon assays, consistent ceramic decorative motifs (Vogel 2011), and mimetic techniques utilized among the three sectors that were systematically investigated (Pacifico 2014).
Figure 7.2. El Purgatorio overview showing Sectors A, B, C, and D
Sector A is a monumental district characterized by large, rectangular, multifunction compounds constructed of adobe and stone (Vogel et al. 2010). The size, construction materials, and artifacts found within these compounds indicate that Sector A housed elites and hosted rituals with citywide importance (Vogel et al. 2010, 35). Sector A was also the site of administrative and productive activities (Vogel et al. 2010, 35). Sector C is a less well-built portion of the city that also had multifunctional adobe and stone compounds. Sector C is characterized by rectangular compounds containing adobe and built largely of stone. However, it is not as well constructed as Sector A. Sector D contains rough building foundations and patches cleared of stone that may have been residences and animal pens, though its history and functions require further analysis.
Sector B was the commoner residential district of El Purgatorio. While Sectors A and C are located in the pampa at the western toe of Cerro Mucho Malo, Sector B climbs the two west-facing arms of Mucho Malo—a geography that divides the commoner residential district into northern and southern counterparts: Sector B North and Sector B South (figure 7.3). Sector B was identified as the commoner residential district because, unlike Sectors A and C, Sector B is characterized primarily by numerous repetitive structures made of piled, unworked field stones. Many of those structures are domestic terraces that climb Mucho Malo, much as pueblos jóvenes or favelas surround rapidly expanding cities in Latin America today. Sector B South is the focus of this chapter, and it is covered by the foundations of stone-based structures comparable to the SIAR at Chan Chan (Topic 1982) and is itself divided into upper and lower sections by a horizontal wall at about 268 masl.
Figure 7.3. Detail of El Purgatorio’s Sector B South, a nonelite residential area
Research Methods and Results
Investigations in Sector B South used a methodology I call neighborhood archaeology. Neighborhood archaeology builds upon household archaeology and the more recent community archaeologies2 of Marcello Canuto and Jason Yaeger (2000), Allison R. Davis (2011), Naoise Mac Sweeney (2011), and Steven A. Wernke (2006, 2007, 2013). Community archaeology improved upon household archaeology by recognizing that households are typically diverse, socially embedded, and politically salient units of societies (e.g., Keith 2003; Sampson 2012; Stone 1987). Neighborhood archaeology improves upon community archaeology by investigating the interrelation of demographic, spatial, and ideational components of communities to understand how large-scale social formations (e.g., cities, polities, states) were produced vis-à-vis their commoner residents’ everyday activities.
Drawing on practice theory (e.g., Bourdieu 1972; de Certeau 1984; Giddens 1984), identity theory (e.g., Anderson 1983; Brubaker and Cooper 2000; Cohen 1985), and spatialized urban anthropology (e.g., Davis 1998, 2004; Holston 1999, 2008; Low 1996, 1999a, 1999b, 2011), neighborhood archaeology examines households in context with respect to their identities, everyday activities, spatial practices, and experiences to understand—in this case—how commoners contributed to social institutions at El Purgatorio and in the Casma Polity. Michael Smith and Juliana Novic (2012) defined neighborhoods as bottom-up social groups where individuals have face-to-face social relationships. Scott Hutson (2016) suggested that neighborhoods likely had fuzzy boundaries but could house no more than about 2,000 people. These guidelines are helpful in identifying and analyzing archaeological neighborhoods. However, it is most likely that neighborhoods were formed through the tensions of bottom-up and top-down forces (Pacifico 2019; Pacifico and Truex 2019). Moreover, it is unlikely that all neighborhood residents knew (or now know) one another face to face. Rather, neighborhoods are places where neighbors know one another as if they had face-to-face relationships (Pacifico 2019; Pacifico and Truex 2019). This experiential component of neighborhoods helps make potentially alienating and new urban environments tolerable, especially in periods of rapid urbanization—points elaborated by Hutson (2016), Monica L. Smith (2019), and David Pacifico and Lise Truex (2019; also Pacifico 2019). In this light, despite the internal wall, Sector B South should be considered a neighborhood in that it is spatially distinct from other parts of the city, its residents likely encountered one another virtually on a daily basis, and it includes areas where these neighbors came together periodically. These are the archaeological hallmarks of neighborhoods (Hutson 2016; Pacifico 2019; Smith and Novic 2012).
Two forms of analysis were used to analyze the structures in Sector B South: qualitative analysis and quantitative analysis.3 Qualitative analysis focused on an examination of the morphology, materials, and construction techniques utilized in building the different residences in Sector B South as well as their location within the residential district. Melissa Vogel (2003, 58, 232) identifies a number of indicators of status in Casmeño settlements, including adobe, plaster, roofing, serving vessels in general, and stirrup-spout vessels in particular. Hendrik Van Gijseghem (2001, 264) identifies additional “indexical features” of prestige, including ramps and daises, which can be used to mark space as special and also formalize movement within spaces in accordance with spatialized strategies of authority (sensu Lefebvre 1991; Swenson 2006). Quantitative analysis focused on examining the consumption patterns of domestic space, ceramic assemblages, and organic remains found within the residences and other structures in Sector B South. Material richness can be measured in terms of the amount of material present (e.g., total volume of space consumed), the diversity of materials users accessed (e.g., diversity of species utilized), and the type and amount of skill and labor available for architectural projects.
To facilitate these analyses, a qualitative schema for sample selection was developed based on building morphology. I identified three different kinds of architecture in Sector B South: orthogonal, semiorthogonal, and irregular structures. Within these morphological categories, I identified three functional room types: processing rooms, storage rooms, and communal spaces. These room types were defined by their morphology and relationship to adjacent rooms. Processing rooms contained batanes; storage rooms were small, regular, and often clustered; communal spaces were defined by the largest room or rooms in a given structure, especially if they had multiple entrances. These categories provided a representative sample of architecture and artifact assemblages for interpreting the social dimensions of Sector B South. Indeed, excavations confirmed the residential functions of these structures but also revealed differences in supplemental functions, household configuration, and status hierarchy among commoners.
Unfortunately, there was no perfect calculus of household status differences. Rather, different lines of evidence provided insight on different aspects of social hierarchy and inequality in Sector B South. Architectural features provided the clearest and most unequivocal image of social diversity in Sector B South from both a qualitative and quantitative standpoint. Ceramic assemblages measured by volume, diversity, and density paint a mixed picture of inequality in the residential neighborhood.4 Organic remains suggest a certain equality of access to staples. However, further examination is required to fully understand the organic remains from Sector B South at El Purgatorio.
Qualitative analyses showed that only orthogonal buildings (figure 7.4, figure 7.5) included labor-intensive construction materials such as adobe and mortar; extensive fill efforts to bring surfaces to level; “indexical features” of prestige, for example, ramps, daises, and platforms (Van Gijseghem 2001, 264); and orthogonal footprints indicative of a single, coordinated planning and building episode.
Figure 7.4. Layout and circulation pattern of orthogonal structure in Sector B South
Figure 7.5. Adobes and rock fill in Sector B South orthogonal structure
In contrast, semiorthogonal buildings (figure 7.6) consisted only of unmortared, unworked stone foundations topped with quincha walls, noted as commoner materials by Vogel (2003, 58). They conformed to the landscape with little or no leveling fill, and their footprints meandered. Their morphology suggests initial construction around a central orthogonal patio, with later, agglutinative expansions that drifted further and further away from the original orthogonal room.
Figure 7.6. Layout and circulation pattern of semiorthogonal patio-group structure in Sector B South
Finally, irregular buildings (figure 7.7) also consisted exclusively of unmortared, unworked field stone with quincha-topped walls. Irregular footprints indicate that these buildings were built by their residents and crammed into whatever space was available after neighboring buildings had been constructed.
Figure 7.7. Layout and circulation pattern of irregular structure in Sector B South
Quantitative analysis showed differential access to space and ceramic vessels but relatively uniform access to foodstuffs. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) (table 7.1, table 7.2) reveals a statistically significant difference in space per room among these three different residence forms.5 Orthogonal residences had the most room space, semi-orthogonal residences had a middling amount of room space, and irregular residences had the least room space per capita. Ceramic artifact assemblages complement these findings. Ceramic fragment density, overall abundance (within 2 m × 2m or 2 m × 3m sample units to sterile), and relative abundance (defined as the ratio between different functional vessel forms in the same unit)6 indicate that orthogonal residences had access to more and higher-quality ceramic vessels.7 In contrast, organic remains from foodstuffs, including marine mollusks, maize, and domesticated fruits, were relatively equivalent among these three residence forms.8
Materializing Household Form, Family, and Social Inequality
Fourteen separate structures were mapped in Sector B South, and eight of them were excavated. The archaeological remains in Sector B South suggest that taphonomic processes left a relatively clear record of room functions. There were typically three strata to a depth of about 50 cm in rooms bounded by gabbro stone foundations rising above the current surface. The top layer was a mix of overburden and silt with artifacts that had washed into or been dropped onto their current location, which was probably not far from their last place of use. The next stratum was typically an informal—or sometimes prepared—use-floor supporting objects used or stored in the room and then left behind. Below this was a sandy, silty matrix with stone and rubble fill with some cultural material. Of seventeen radiocarbon assays, sixteen produced dates ranging from the late thirteenth to early fifteenth centuries, suggesting a very short lifespan for Sector B South.
Data were collected through mapping, surface artifact collection, and excavation, then processed through laboratory and spatial analyses—all of which were supervised by the author. Analyses indicate the presence of three different social statuses that composed the commoners at El Purgatorio. These three social statuses were part of a fairly broad middle class, as defined by their relationship to the means of production. In brief, it seems that whatever their status, as commoners they did not own, grow, or broker the majority of the raw materials in the Casma economy. Rather, they provided the labor for manufacturing the raw materials into the staple goods on which El Purgatorio’s economy was based. These diverse social statuses among the middle class correlate to different household configurations that typified Casma commoners. Household configuration, in turn, defined potential for participation in the redistributive economy that was central to the life of both the Sector B South neighborhood and the city at large. This economy likely centered on chicha, given the abundant evidence for its consumption and production: maize cobs, grinding stones, brewing, fermenting, and consumption vessels.
Table 7.1. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) of room area, by building morphology
| N | Mean | Std. Deviation | Std. Error | 95% Confidence Interval for Mean | Minimum | Maximum | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lower Bound | Upper Bound | |||||||
High-Status ORTHOGONAL | 69 | 77.48640899 | 98.511455110 | 11.859385562 | 54 | 101 | 0.960589 | 422.053422 |
Middle-Status SEMI ORTHOG | 706 | 40.03492079 | 61.102133902 | 2.299609145 | 36 | 45 | 2.193317 | 692.330310 |
Low-Status IRREGULAR | 166 | 23.61220958 | 19.573377833 | 1.519188749 | 21 | 27 | 2.699715 | 138.273000 |
Table 7.2. Statistical significance of ANOVA
| Sum of Squares | df | Mean Square | F | Sig. | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Between groups | 149681.727 | 3 | 49893.909 | 13.989 | 0.000 |
Within groups | 3363427.707 | 943 | 3566.731 | ||
Total | 3513109.435 | 946 |
Several structures contained evidence of serving as focal nodes of production and consumption (sensu Hutson 2016). Those structures are BCL8 and BCL1, high-status urban commoner residences with additional public functions; BCL5, a middle-status urban commoner residence; and BCL2, a low-status urban commoner residence. Within the context of El Purgatorio and the wider hinterland in the Casma Valley, these divisions among the urban commoners suggest that El Purgatorio’s commoners composed a broad and stratified middle class. The highest-status commoners may have been low-level administrators in charge of ensuring the neighborhood’s overall productivity in the city’s and state’s economies. Middle-and low-status urban commoners would have been middle-class laborers and manufacturers (perhaps part-time specialists in food production and building construction). It is likely that a lower class of laborers lived outside the city. However, it is expected that these classes were not hermetically sealed. There were likely divisions within them, the potential for some mobility, and certainly porosity and fuzzy boundaries between them. Indeed, a classic Western class structure may not perfectly map onto ancient Casma society.
High-Status Urban Commoners: Nuclear Families and Nice Houses
Here I focus on four buildings that illustrate the archaeological and social differences among three distinct status groups and household forms among El Purgatorio’s commoners in Sector B South: BCL8, BCL1, BCL5, and BCL2. The highest-status urban commoner households are represented by BCL8 and BCL1. Middle-status urban commoner households are represented by BCL5, and low-status urban commoners are represented by BCL2. BCL8 and BCL1 are two orthogonal buildings at different central points within the overall layout of Sector B South. They also represent two complementary functions within the neighborhood, both of which were carried out by the highest-status members of the urban commoners.
BCL8: High-Status Residence and Occasional Production and Consumption Center
BCL8 is at the overall center of Sector B South (figure 7.3). The building is fairly large (tables 7.3 and 7.4), with an overall orthogonal footprint (figure 7.4) and orthogonal individual rooms that meet neatly at shared corners. BCL8 is located on a ridge line on the southern arm of Mucho Malo’s western face. It is located up against the Heavy Stone Wall that traverses the 268 masl contour of Mucho Malo and also divides Sector B South into uphill and downhill sections (figure 7.3). Because of its location, BCL8 took on a number of important characteristics. First, it was built at a location that was both the nexus of, and the point of symbolic distinction between, residents of uphill and downhill Sector B South. The Heavy Stone Wall was neither defensive nor very effective for preventative functions. Rather, it likely provided a symbolic break between residents of different parts of a moiety-organized neighborhood. It also created a large terrace that may have served as a promenade. In that light, the imagined component of the neighborhood community in Sector B South likely drew on idioms of kinship, suggesting that households were likely reflexively conceived of as families of various configurations and sizes.
Residing at this key point in the neighborhood landscape, BCL8 had a commanding view of the lower Casma Valley and its extensive irrigated floor. Given that BCL8 also had the most extensive food-processing center in the neighborhood (Pacifico 2012, 2014), it is likely that BCL8 played an administrative role in the political ecology of the valley, at least insofar as that political ecology involved commoner households. Because of this centrality and its location on the spur, BCL8 was also meant to be seen. Beyond its material functions, BCL8 also played a symbolic function within the neighborhood community of Sector B South.
The symbolic function of BCL8 was tied to the status of the residents and chief users and was materialized in the construction materials used to build it. Those construction materials were unique in Sector B South and matched in the entirety of Sector B only by a single structure in Sector B North called BAS5, which is at the center of its arm of Mucho Malo. The construction materials that set BCL8 apart are the adobes used in its construction and the technique with which they were laid. BCL8 is the only structure in Sector B South to include adobes, and they were laid in a chamber-and-fill method using the soga y cabeza bricklaying pattern (figure 7.5). Adobes require choice sand, labor, and water—all of which are scarcer in the desert and require transportation to the construction site, in contrast to the unworked field stone that was used in virtually every other structure in Sector B South and Sector B North. Both adobes and water are heavy. They must have been hauled several dozens of meters uphill and over a kilometer away from the river bottom. The ability to marshal rare resources and skill is evidence that the residents of BCL8 were among the highest-status residents in Sector B South. Their status was likely a function of their linkage to central authorities in other parts of El Purgatorio, especially Sector A. The use of adobes and the soga y cabeza (figure 7.5) bricklaying pattern are mimetic of the elite compounds of Sector A, many of which are soga y cabeza adobes atop stone foundations.
Table 7.3. Ordinal comparison of overall building (cluster) area; clusters ranked by overall area (smallest to largest, in m2)
| Arch. Type | Type 5 | Type 5 | Type 2 | Type 2 | Type 2 | Type 6 | Type 3 | Type 3 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 | Type 4 | Type 1 | Type 1 | Type 4 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cluster | BAS3 | BAS2 | BCL2 | BCL9 | BCL10 | BAS4 | BCL1 | BAS5 | BCL3 | BCL8 | BCL4 | BCL5 | BCL16 | BCL15 | BCL6 |
Total Area | 71.68 | 321.16 | 542.84 | 598.6 | 864.74 | 964.6 | 1093.5 | 1257.74 | 1913.44 | 2030.72 | 2366.65 | 5141.39 | 5293.24 | 6539.23 | 8924.15 |
* mean = 2,528.25 m2, median = 1,257.74 m2
Table 7.4. Ordinal comparison of mean room (enclosure) area; clusters ranked by mean enclosure size (smallest to largest, in m2)
| Arch. Type | Type 2 | Type 2 | Type 2 | Type 2 | Type 3 | Type 4 | Type 4 | Type 5 | Type 4 | Type 4 | Type 4 | Type 6 | Type 5 | Type 3 | Type 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Cluster | BCL10 | BCL9 | BCL2 | BCL3 | BCL1 | BCL16 | BCL4 | BAS3 | BCL15 | BCL5 | BCL6 | BAS4 | BAS2 | BCL8 | BAS5 |
Mean Enclosure Area (m2) | 20.11 | 20.64 | 22.62 | 27.33 | 28.04 | 32.08 | 32.42 | 35.84 | 37.37 | 41.13 | 53.12 | 87.69 | 107.05 | 135.38 | 314.44 |
* mean = 66.35 m2, median = 35.8 m2
Architectural features of BCL8 also link its residents—and functions—to those of Sector A. “Indexical features” of prestige (Van Gijseghem 2001, 264) are architectural features that set apart buildings and their residents as distinct from others in Sector B South. BCL8’s Room 1 is its largest room, and Room 1’s back wall abuts the Heavy Stone Wall (figure 7.3). Indeed, to be in BCL8 Room 1 is to be at the conceptual and physical center of Sector B South. The main feature of that room is a dais (figure 7.4), an architectural marker of a special space, often used for audiences and other important events including feasts. Room 1 is approached by a zigzagging ramp that formalizes movement while traversing the rooms that front Room 1, rooms that likely supported the residential function of BCL8, as evidenced by ceramic and organic remains.
In addition to these indexical markers, which both formalized movement and the use of space in BCL8 while also symbolically marking it as special to those who saw it, BCL8 has one of the few overt instances of architectural decoration in Sector B South. BCL8 had significant roofed portions—noted by Vogel (2003) as indices of high-status spaces in Casma Polity settlements—as evidenced by the stumps of wooden posts once used to support the roof sections. Like adobe, wood is a resource-intensive material. One post found in BCL8 was particularly thick in diameter and, more important, was carved in a decorative “stacked saucer” form, much like an oversize wooden version of the bendable section of a plastic straw.
Complementing the architectural evidence from BCL8, the portable remains recovered there indicate high-status commoner residential features combined with public administrative and ritual functions (Nash [2009] noted that combined residential elite and public ritual functions are common in Prehispanic Andean settlements). Architectural elements emulated the elite architecture especially from the city’s monumental and administrative core in Sector A.
BCL8’s portable remains show that complementary and perhaps competing activities occurred in Sector B South. BCL8’s Room 1 produced the most bowls (end-user serving vessels) recovered from any single data-collection unit (68 bowl fragments from surface collection [48.22% of all bowl fragments from surface collection]; the next closest unit produced 16 fragments in one excavation unit). In complement, a high number of jar fragments were also found in BCL8 Room 1 during surface collection (n=27, 29.67% of all jar fragments collected during surface collections). A high quantity of bowl fragments indicates that the room was a primary food and drink consumption area, while the jars—useful both in chicha brewing and decanting—suggest that the pouring and consumption of chicha happened with greatest intensity in BCL8’s Room 1. It was also the location of the only stirrup-spout fragment found in all of Sector B South and produced the only sculptural vessel found in Sector B South, a duck-bellied vessel. Stirrup spouts were identified by Vogel (2003) as high-status vessels and are recognized as used for serving liquids. The organic remains from BCL8 Room 1 indicate that large quantities of marine mollusks, which provided the majority of the protein in Sector B South, were consumed in BCL8 Room 1.
In total, the architectural and portable remains from BCL8, especially Room 1, indicate that it served as a central structure in Sector B South that was the venue for intensive food-consumption episodes: feasts. The abundance of mollusk remains and the abundance of evidence for chicha production both in BCL8’s Room 7 and elsewhere in Sector B South (Pacifico 2012) lead to the conclusion that BCL8 was a feasting venue in which mollusks and chicha were consumed in great quantity. Evidence for chicha production includes the ubiquitous maize cobs found throughout the neighborhood, brewing vessels (tinajas, jars), and grinding implements for rendering malted maize kernels into brewable mash.
Despite its ritual and production functions, BCL8 was also residential, and the household it sheltered was likely relatively small (likely conceived as a kin group, e.g., a family) compared to the middle-status urban commoners discussed below. The series of terraces and rooms that surround BCL8 show evidence of residential functions. Chief among these clues are a full suite of domestic vessels, including not only the bowls and jars used for serving and producing chicha and other foodstuffs, respectively, but also more mundane ollas used in cooking. There are also smaller food-production stations that indicate smaller-scale food-production episodes more suitable for a nuclear or small extended family than for feasting purposes. Specifically, grinding stones (batanes) found in small clusters in BCL8 Room 1 and a lone batán in BCL8 Room 3 indicate that small groups of people were producing relatively small amounts of food for relatively small groups of consumers. Small groups of batanes are the ideal setup for working, talking, and perhaps watching other people (e.g., children playing) while family foodstuffs are being processed. Taken altogether, the evidence from BCL8 suggests multiple scales of use within the residence of a high-status nuclear or small extended family.
These small groupings of batanes contrast with the line of eleven batanes in Room 7, which suggests that massive food-production episodes were conducted under the conditions of surveillance and with relatively little socializing. A single overseer would have been able to watch over all eleven processing stations in a single gaze. Because Room 7’s line of eleven batanes faces a retention wall, only adjacent workers would have been able to converse. Moreover, the relatively small room and proximity of the retention wall mitigate the probability of multitasking while grinding food in Room 7. This arrangement of batanes suggests a contrasting context to smaller groups found elsewhere. Whereas smaller groups could have been used in daily, social production episodes, these eleven batanes are arranged for maximal production and minimal socialization.
Analysis of variance in spatial consumption (measured by average room size) indicates with statistical significance that this family had the privilege of lots of space per room, more than any other resident in Sector B South. They may also have had access to a second residence or been directly tied to a family living in BCL1, which also served as a public functional counterpart to BCL8.
BCL1: High-Status Residence and Central Storage
BCL1 is an orthogonal structure that occupies the center position in the lower plain of Sector B South (figure 7.3), surrounded by sprawling middle-status residences. It complements BCL8, and its storage complex is linked to BCL8’s receiving room. BCL1 is smaller than BCL8 but is nevertheless orthogonal. Its overall footprint ends in clean orthogonal angles, and its internal rooms meet at neat corners. Unlike BCL8, BCL1 does not incorporate mortar; nor was there evidence of architectural decorations, like the post in BCL8. However, the morphology, location, and spatial consumption of BCL1 suggest that it complemented BCL8 demographically and functionally. It may have been an extension of the BCL8 household or family and appears to have had a centralized storage function in the neighborhood in complement to the consumption and processing functions of BCL8 in Room 1 and Room 7, respectively.
BCL1 is dominated by two features that suggest its dual high-status residential and public administrative function. The core of BCL1 is an open room or patio, perhaps with a large bench, that articulates in an open floor plan into a series of other rooms with multiple functions. Matching the small-family household configuration seen in BCL8, BCL1 has a single and a pair of grinding stones, suggestive of small processing episodes for small to moderate groups of consumers: nuclear or small extended families.
In parallel with this nuclear residential function, BCL1 also houses a formal complex of storage rooms unlike any others found in Sector B South. The northeast quadrant of BCL1 is a series of four, perhaps later expanded to seven, large and rectangular storage rooms. One such room was excavated and was larger than an analogous room excavated in the middle-status urban commoner residence BCL5. In addition to this orthogonal complex of storage rooms in BCL1 is a string of additional orthogonal storage rooms off its west edge. Fronting the main complex of BCL1 storage rooms is a receiving room that is somewhat thin but fronts the length of the storage compartments. The receiving room has a rare, still-visible doorway that opens onto one of Sector B South’s paths that extends up between a complex of low-status urban commoner residences located on the steep side of the spur atop which BCL8 resides. The path ends at BCL8 Room 8, a heavy-walled receiving room off the northwest corner of BCL8, a room that also contained a number of jar fragments.
Taken together, the central structures of BCL8 and BCL1 suggest that high-status urban commoner families occupied central spaces and central roles in the redistributive economy of Sector B South. They also linked the neighborhood and its ritual-economic institutions to the elites in Sector A, both symbolically and practically. BCL8 was visually symbolic—through architectural mimesis—of Sector A and the elite central authority that originated there. BCL1 supported the production and consumption activities that underwrote the extension of central authority into Sector B South by storing the goods to be consumed in BCL8 Room 1. Indeed, if this is the case, then high-status urban commoners in Sector B South, occupying BCL8 and BCL1, were likely a single nuclear family or a small core of an extended family in which the administration of elite-originating authority was vested.
Middle-Status Urban Commoner Residences: Extended Families
In contrast to these smaller but high-status commoner households in Sector B South, many of its residents lived in patio-group clusters of semiorthogonal form. These patio groups were inhabited by multiple nodes of extended families that occupied separate lobes around an orthogonal patio that served as their cluster’s core. In terms of architectural materials, these patio groups had access only to limited construction materials and were probably built by their inhabitants and those with whom their inhabitants might be able to engage in labor exchanges (e.g., Mayer 2002; Smith 2007, 2011).
BCL5 is an excellent example of the patio group as a household and exemplifies the evidence that suggests that its residents were of middling status among the commoners in Sector B South. BCL5 (figure 7.6) is built entirely of stone foundations composed of unworked stones found right on the side of the mountain. Atop these stone foundations were quincha walls that are no longer present. In fact, no quincha itself was found, although the raw materials of quincha including Gynerium saggitatum and Phragmites comunis were recovered throughout Sector B South, including in BCL5.9
The morphology of BCL5 indicates the strategy of its construction. It was built around an orthogonal core of a rectangular patio. As families built and expanded their lobes off of the patio, their architecture strayed further and further from orthogonality. This semiorthogonal morphology suggests an expedient construction plan (Smith 2007). Expediently built structures begin with an ideal orthogonal core—in this case likely a central patio—but then extend outward, with less attention to the aesthetics of orthogonality and more attention to rapid construction of additional rooms built most likely by the residents of the structure. This vernacular architectural strategy requires less specialized labor and implies diminished visual impact from high-status urban commoner structures in Sector B South. However, it does not suggest a lack of a plan or skill. Rather, it is a separate planning scheme, skill set, and response to priorities from those employed in BCL8 and BCL1. Orthogonal structures were built with the same plan and perhaps the same planners and laborers as the monumental core in Sector A. Similarly, their functions were lightly residential and largely symbolic and public. In contrast, the semiorthogonal structures in Sector B South were largely residential in function and satisfied attendant priorities. Patios at the center of residential lobes provided places for communal work—evidenced by batanes—and for communal consumption—evidenced by the high number of bowl fragments excavated in BCL5 Patio 1 (n=14, 17.5% of the excavated bowl fragments).
In addition to these social priorities, residential comfort was also attended to in the design of middle-status commoner patio-group residences. Raised door jambs held in the cool air near the floor as the desert afternoon heated up, and patios interconnected by small apertures and passageways would have promoted airflow through these shared spaces.
In contrast, many of the rooms in the residential lobes are relatively small compared to their counterparts in high-status urban commoner dwellings (see table 7.1). They also contain individual batanes or act as smaller clusters of storage rooms than those of BCL1. These numerous but diminutive sets of resources fortify the conclusion that these patio groups were the residences of middle-status commoners at El Purgatorio. Indeed, ANOVA shows that the spatial consumption of these structures was of a middling magnitude: the average room size for these structures was categorically distinct from the sizes of the rooms of both high-status and low-status urban commoners. The rooms of these structures, on average, are medium in comparison to their neighbors of different statuses. They are not as roomy as high-status commoner dwellings but roomier than low-status commoner dwellings.
However, these structures have an overall large size. Why would middle-status households have such access to large spaces, though with limited per capita access to space as calculated by individual inhabitant or room? Clusters of multiple batanes suggest that these extended households were able to “earn” the right to such large overall spaces (though still less per capita than high-status urban commoners) by producing surpluses of food, likely for communal consumption outside the household. While most batanes were found as single processing tools in room corners, a number of clusters indicate that special intensive processing sessions were needed to supplement the production of single individuals (table 7.5). Why did they need neat rows of multiple batanes when single batanes would do in most cases?
Table 7.5. Batán configurations and distribution
| Status | High | Middle | Low | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
Batán config. | ||||
Singles | 3 | 189 | 29 | 222 |
Doubles | 3 | 14 | 1 | 18 |
Triples | 2 | 6 | 1 | 9 |
Quads | 0 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
> 10 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Small clusters of batanes in these middle-status commoner residences mirror—in miniature—the intensive production center in BCL8 Room 7. Thus middle-status urban commoner households were able to marshal large amounts of labor and therefor claim large amounts of space overall for their families based on the argument that (1) the families were rather large and (2) large families could richly participate in the production of food for neighborhood feasts. Indeed, it appears that they had to make good on this promise, as there are numerous instances of multiple-batán installments in middle-status patio-group residences. Some of these are aligned, suggesting in-house surveillance of the production episodes and the administration of these in-house surplus production episodes. This production arrangement compares favorably with Payson Sheets’s (2000) findings at Cerén, El Salvador. There, households produced surpluses for a vertical economy in which they exchanged household surplus goods for specialty goods acquired at regional marketplaces. At El Purgatorio, this household surplus was funneled into the vertical neighborhood economy for redistribution at neighborhood feasts or into the citywide economy as labor and goods tribute collected by elites in Sector A. Nevertheless, the limited resources for constructing these residences, the peripheral location in the neighborhood, and the per capita access to space indicate that these residents were of a middle status compared to the nuclear families living in adobe-lain structures of orthogonal morphology at central locations in Sector B South that made reference to the architecture of Sector A.
Low-Status Urban Commoners: Cramped Quarters
Low-status urban commoner households lived in irregular residences that appear to have been crammed into the space remaining after central, orthogonal, high-status urban commoner households and peripheral, semiorthogonal patio residences had been built by middle-status urban commoners. BCL2 is an excellent example of a low-status urban commoner house. It is built only of unworked field stones and has a kidney bean–like overall footprint. Many of its rooms are irregular multilaterals, including its principle Rooms 1 and 2. Although they are the largest rooms in BCL2, neither is as large as the patios in middle-status urban commoner houses, and they do not form a central space in the residence of a large household. Rather, BCL2 was likely occupied by a nuclear family. The presence of just a single usable grinding stone, with a second recycled in a wall, suggests that the food preparation here was meant only for a small audience. Similarly, the overall small size of the structure suggests a small number of residents. Those residents also occupied the smallest rooms per capita in Sector B South.
Figure 7.8. Chart visualizing ceramic jar fragments from excavations
Figure 7.9. Chart visualizing ceramic tinaja fragments from excavations
However, the residents of BCL2 had access to an unusually large number of ceramics, measured by fragment density, and access to a large variety of vessel forms as well (n=7) (Pacifico 2014, 456). Among those fragments were a large number10 of tinaja and jar fragments excavated, respectively, in Room 1, a large room with a batán, and Room 12, a storage room. These ceramic finds suggest that the residents of BCL2 may have been a small household specializing in brewing surplus chicha for communal consumption.11 If that is the case, it is likely that the residents of BCL2 served as brewers in Sector B South. As brewers, they had access to lots of ceramic vessels but not to space, labor-intensive construction materials, or the architectural knowledge applied to orthogonal structures. They may also have been among the last residents to move into Sector B South12 and therefore were limited to occupying whatever space was left in the neighborhood, as was the case with the residents of other structures of irregular architecture. If that was the case, then it would suggest potential for social mobility in the Casma Valley during the final century and a half at El Purgatorio. Perhaps brewers, likely related to people already living in Sector B South, were brought into the neighborhood to further facilitate the neighborhood and city feasting economy. This move would likely have conferred upon the residents a higher status than that of those living outside the city, but still among the lowest status within the commoner residential neighborhood at El Purgatorio.
Figure 7.10. Jar fragments from surface collections
Figure 7.11.Tinaja fragments from surface collections
Figure 7.12. Ceramic bowl fragments from surface collections
Figure 7.13. Ceramic bowl fragments from excavations
Conclusions, Caveats, and Future Directions
A neighborhood archaeological approach at El Purgatorio’s Sector B South revealed the extent and configuration of social diversity among commoners in a way focused household archaeology would not have done. Social diversity among commoners was configured around a three-tier status hierarchy that was likely related to family size, subsequent labor power, and perhaps additional qualities like relationship to people already residing in the city and date of migration into the city. Qualitative and quantitative analyses indicate three different status identities among the commoner households at El Purgatorio and the fact that these status differences had consequences in terms of material wealth. First, high-status urban commoners lived in orthogonal residences whose form and construction materials made architectural reference to the monumental compounds in Sector A.13 High-status urban commoners were a social link to city elites, and they played a leading role in creating community in the commoner neighborhoods by hosting massive production and consumption episodes. Given the overall size of high-status urban commoner residences and the distribution of batanes within their residences, it is likely that high-status urban commoner households consisted of nuclear families or small extended families.
Second, middle-status urban commoners lived in sprawling compounds arranged around large central patios. These middle-status commoners lived in smaller rooms than high-status commoners, and they apportioned the greatest amount of their residential spaces for communal patios. These households were extended families composed of numerous nuclear groups, evidenced by the lobe-like sets of rooms and terraces that surround central patios containing redundant food-processing facilities. Due to the large number of people in these households and their numerous grinding stones, it is likely that middle-status households “earned” their right to have extensive overall spaces by providing large amounts of labor in brewing chicha for communal events in the neighborhood. These commoners also probably provided a large amount of chicha that was skimmed off by elites in Sector A as a tribute tax used in citywide rituals in the monumental district.
Low-status urban commoners lived in small, irregularly shaped residences with small rooms. They were likely nuclear families or small extended families. They did not enjoy the communal spaces of patios or typically have large numbers of grinding stones. Therefore, low-status urban commoner households could not participate robustly in the production of chicha for communal consumption, either in the neighborhood or in the citywide rituals held in the monumental district.
However, all the households had access to staple foodstuffs beyond their immediate ability to produce them personally. Although there was no evidence that residents of Sector B South were agriculturalists (as was also the case at Huacas Moche [Chapdelaine 2009]), all households had access to edible marine and terrestrial mollusks (especially Perumytilus purpuratus and Semimytilus algosus), maize, and domesticated fruits. Thus despite clear evidence of unequal access to architectural, spatial, and labor resources and notwithstanding a complex and unequal distribution of ceramic vessels, households in Sector B South all appeared to have had access to staple goods that they did not produce in raw form themselves: excavations turned up no agricultural implements; Sector B South is far away from and high above the fields and water; in contrast, its residents are very close to the ritual, administrative, and production facilities at El Purgatorio.
Broader Implications: Productive and Restrictive Embedded Inequalities
It is likely that these households and their hierarchies were existent in some form before the rapid development of Sector B South in the late thirteenth century AD. These families were probably drawn to the city for the easy and equitable access to foodstuffs arranged by elites in Sector A; in exchange, they provided labor for the production of chicha sent to the monumental district for distribution by city elites. However, once in the city, the context and configuration of social hierarchies was likely reconfigured. Preliminary research in El Purgatorio’s hinterland (Pacifico 2019) suggests that immigration into El Purgatorio was not a simple translation of the village into the city. Certainly, moving into the city implies accepting many of the negative effects of social density in exchange for other benefits, and the production of neighborhoods can help mitigate the cons by creating a sense of structure, security, and belonging in the new setting (Hutson 2016; Pacifico 2019; Pacifico and Truex 2019; Smith 2019).
However, enduring the negative aspects of population density for access to goods and rituals may not be the only bargain new urbanites encountered. Some commoner households probably retained or attained high statuses through affiliation with elites. But that affiliation and status came with both the responsibilities and the benefits of organizing, hosting, and provisioning feasts. While hosting feasts can establish and concretize status among one’s neighbors, hosting is a burdensome activity that requires secure access to and proper distribution of resources. It also comes with the risk of deposition in the case of failure (Dietler 2001; Durkheim 1995 [1912], 217–227; Foucault 1975, 63–69). Other households, those of middling statuses, worked for their access to ample space or were allotted ample space on the promise (viz. “credit” sensu Graeber 2012) of providing ample labor. They, too, gained access to secure marine and agricultural resources arranged by elites in Sector A, but middle-status households seem to have been required to produce relatively large amounts of chicha for intra- and extraneighborhood consumption. Finally, some households gained access to the city and the redistributive economy of foodstuffs but not to ample space, labor, or materials for building their houses. The draw of the city must then have been greater than the seemingly ample space of the countryside.
As a case study in preindustrial urbanism in an agricultural and marine resource area, El Purgatorio’s Sector B South suggests that urbanism and urban hierarchies may have entailed a mixed bargain. Certain preexisting social hierarchies may have been reduced. For example, before moving to the city, many of El Purgatorio’s resident households may have had less secure access to staples or perhaps access only to the foods they could produce or collect themselves. However, in the city they would have more secure and equitable access to marine and agricultural goods. In exchange, it is likely that before moving to the city, those households had more ample living space. They were also closer to the water and sand necessary for making the adobe that in the city was limited to the highest-status residences. Once in the city, space, labor, and building materials became premium goods with material consequences in terms of the physical comfort that is provided by ample space, breezy patios, and high doorjambs that trap cool air in the hot desert afternoons (Rapoport 1969).
More generally, research at El Purgatorio directs us to consider the historicity of inequality to understand its configurations and significances under different circumstances. Consequently, urbanism appears to be a sociospatial gamble. It provides opportunities to alleviate the consequences of certain forms of inequality but may create, exacerbate, and concretize new forms of inequality. These inequalities may have interrelated and unintended social, spatial, and material consequences that may lead to future social processes of settlement and neighborhood reconfiguration. Indeed, many of El Purgatorio’s residents seem to have rapidly relocated to the new Chimú-Casma center at Manchán just after AD 1400.
Notes
1. Including a mysterious hiatus of complex settlements as well (Collier 1962; Thompson 1964, 1974).
2. Not to be confused with the community archaeology of Marshall (2002), which aims to connect local, descendant communities to the excavation and interpretation of archaeological materials near their homes.
3. All of the data are available in tabular form in Pacifico (2014, appendix C), which is available for open access at the durable link https://pqdtopen.proquest.com/pubnum/3627869.html.
4. Ceramic assemblages came from both surface collection and excavation. I designed and conducted both phases of research and analyses, ensuring consistency in the integration of data.
5. 95% confidence interval for mean room area: orthogonal structures = 54–101m2; semiorthogonal structures = 36–46m2; irregular structures = 21–27 m2; p = 0.000; n=947 (Pacifico 2014).
6. For example, the highest-status residence/ritual structure—BCL8—produced the most ceramic fragments during excavations, the second-widest variety of rim fragments, and the second-highest density of excavated fragments. It also had the highest density of fragments collected during systematic surface survey of vessel fragments (Pacifico 2014, 456).
7. Though select areas in some semiorthogonal structures had notably high numbers of fine bowls and one notable irregular structure also had a high number and wide range of ceramic vessel fragments.
8. All residents had access to between 21 and 29 species of the 46 identified in Sector B South, though mammalian remains (in the form of cuy/guinea pig, Cavia porcellus) were limited to high-status residences (Pacifico 2014).
9. Nash (2009) points out that commoner domestic structures are often built of ephemeral materials that do not survive at all.
10. Seventy-one percent (n=61) of excavated tinaja fragments came from Room 1; 50% of the excavated jar fragments came from nearby Room 12. Combined, 72% of excavated jar fragments came from these two proximal rooms in this small structure. Surface collections yielded the most jars (30%, n=27), bowls (48%, n=68), and tinajas (60%, n=180) in BCL8R1: the largest room in another building associated with food processing as well as feasting (figures 7.8–7.13).
11. But not grinding the maize in large quantities, it would seem.
12. Though with the narrow range of dates for Sector B South, it is hard to parse detailed structure histories using radiocarbon assays. BCL2’s two carbon samples return ages of 660±33 and 629±34 years before present among a range of 714 to 629 years before present ±29 to 34 years before present (Pacifico 2014, 211).
13. Much like the “practices of affiliation” practiced by commoners at Xunantunich (Yaeger 2003).
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