World Archaeology

ISSN: 0043-8243 (Print) 1470-1375 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rwar20

The Final Formative Period in the North Coast of

Peru: cooperation during violent times

Hugo C. Ikehara

To cite this article: Hugo C. Ikehara (2016): The Final Formative Period in the
North Coast of Peru: cooperation during violent times, World Archaeology, DOI:
10.1080/00438243.2015.1092883

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2015.1092883

Published online: 25 Jan 2016.

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 The Final Formative Period in the North
Coast of Peru: cooperation during
violent times
Hugo C. Ikehara
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Abstract

During violent times, the defence of the community can be a powerful motivation for cooperation. This
goal can outweigh other needs, and depending on the frequency and scale of the threat, people may even
modify their daily habitus. Changes in settlement patterns and infrastructure are manifestations of these
behavioural shifts as well as evidence of the modification of the networks of cooperation and the formation
of new collectivities. Using the case of the transition between the Late and Final Formative in the Nepeña
Middle Valley, North Coast of Peru, I explore and analyse the relationship between escalated conflict and
the formation of new social identities and political coalitions. During this time, multiple interests, including
different sources of threat, were shaping various nested systems of cooperation in the same region.

Keywords

Cooperation; collective action; warfare; Formative Period; Central Andes; North Coast of Peru.

Introduction

Around 450 BC, after hundreds of years of pacific coexistence, conflict escalated between
communities of the North Coast of Peru (Arkush and Tung 2013). People started to aggregate in
the slopes and tops of the hills, and defensive structures were built in many valleys. This
transition was part of a series of changes that included the abandonment of monumental
ceremonial centres, changes in demographic and settlement patterns, the modification or
replacement of ritual spaces, and changes in pottery assemblages. The end of the long-distance
exchange networks of prestige goods during this period, also reflected profound shifts in
sociopolitical and economic organization at the pan-regional scale (Ikehara and Chicoine
2011; Billman 1999).

© 2015 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/1470-1375 online

http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00438243.2015.1092883
 2 Cooperation during violent times

An archaeological survey and the subsequent diachronic analysis of the settlement pattern of the
middle section of the Nepeña Valley, has shown a high degree of fragmentation and diversification
of political practices in the region after the disintegration of the Cupisnique-Chavín Religious
Complex (Ikehara 2015). I suggest that the formation of multiple districts with their own ceremonial
centres, and the patterns of defence in the area, were manifestations of changes in the way people
were competing and cooperating at different scales of interaction during this violent epoch.
In this article, I explore the modes of cooperation emerging during the Final Formative in the
Nepeña Middle Valley. Cooperation was fundamental to carry out defensive efforts and, as
suggested by collective action theory, the origin, duration and scale of the threats would have
been determinant in the formation of new social groups in the region.

Cooperation in a competitive world

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The study of human cooperation can be traced to early anthropological research (Mead 1937), and
it has gained attention in recent archaeological research for its potential to integrate previous
theoretical frameworks on the evolution of complex sociopolitical organization based in the
dichotomy of voluntaristic vs. coercive, managerial vs. political, or bottom-up vs. top-down
approaches (Carballo 2013a; Spencer 2013). One of the main contributions of the theory on
cooperation and collective action is the integration of a bottom-up perspective that allows us to
consider the potential of human communities for self-organization as well for negotiating, resisting
and/or confronting top-down power (Carballo 2013b; Fargher and Blanton 2007; Spencer 2013).
Cooperation is a behaviour that provides benefits to the recipient whether the provider is
benefited directly or not with the act (Nowak 2006; West, Griffin, and Gardner 2007). It has
been suggested that cooperative behaviour inside very large groups of non-related individuals
can be considered a trait that distinguishes modern humans from other animal species (Carballo
2013b; Turchin et al. 2013), allowing the formation of very large and complex societies such
states and empires (Turchin 2010; Turchin et al. 2013). The basic assumption underlying
collective action is that people cooperate in certain situations because acting as a collectivity,
rather than as an individual, provides significant advantages (Stanish 2004; Roscoe 2013).
Cooperation permits people to coordinate and aggregate the effort of several individuals,
allowing them to maintain institutions or carry out projects of higher complexity and larger
collective benefits (i.e., public goods). For this reason, it has been suggested that the study of
cultural evolution and social complexity can be reframed as the study of cooperation in human
communities (Stanish and Levine 2011). The development of economic specialization (Stanish
2004), and the formation of polities (Blanton and Fargher 2008) are examples of evolutionary
landmarks that resulted from cooperative behaviour.
A noteworthy observation is that cooperation evolves in contexts characterized by competi-
tion between individuals and groups (Nowak 2006; Spencer 2013). Current definitions of
cooperative behaviour suggest that there could be situations in which actors assume the costs
of actions that benefit others members of the group without expecting and actually receiving any
direct benefit for themselves (West, Griffin, and Gardner 2007). Therefore, some kinds of
cooperative behaviour, such as altruism, cannot be satisfactorily explained with models focused
on the individual (Spencer 2013; Turchin 2010). An alternative is the examination of evolu-
tionary models based on group selection (Turchin 2010).
 H. C. Ikehara 3

In group-selection models, the proliferation of cooperators versus defectors or free-riders –

individuals who acquire benefits without incurring a cost – should be evaluated by the way their
frequencies affect the fitness of the group (Turchin 2010). At this level of competition, a group
full of cooperators will have real advantages against groups with higher proportions of free-
riders. Consequently, the monitoring of the proliferations of these individuals is critical to the
survival of the group. In a recent review, Carballo, Roscoe, and Feinman (2014) identifies the
four proximate mechanisms that promote cooperation and avoid free-riders: reciprocity, reputa-
tion, retribution and rewards. (1) Reciprocity is the mechanism that determines the pay-off of an
action; (2) reputation is a monitoring mechanism that predicts the likelihood of an individual to
reciprocate versus the chances to be a free-rider, and is usually acquired by costly signalling
strategies; (3) retributions are sanctions or punishments against non-cooperative agents; and
finally, (4) rewards are the opposite of retribution and provide a positive encouragement of
cooperation. The evaluation of these mechanisms is crucial to understand the motivation for
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cooperation among members of a group in specific historical contexts.

Cooperative behaviour and the formation of collectivities are more likely to occur when
competition between groups intensifies. Warfare is an extremely powerful force in this context
(Spencer 2013; Turchin 2010; Turchin et al. 2013). Spencer (2013) points out that the formation
of collectivities resulted from the compromise between the coordination roles of leaders with the
collaboration of followers in the process. Warfare drastically changes the conditions of competi-
tion, since the interest in survival is a strong incentive to collaborate with leaders and invest in
public goods of a defensive nature.
Because warfare is a high-risk situation, rapid transmission of information is crucial, and
indirect biased cultural transmission between leaders and followers are favoured (Spencer
1993). In these situations, leaders’ authority is rapidly accepted and their behaviour and attitudes
are also replicated among the population (Spencer 1993). Consequently, periods of conflict are
not only moments when new collectivities can be forged, but also instances when leaders can
build factions of supporters in the context of increased competition.

Interests for cooperation during epochs of conflict

Although intense competition between groups boosts cooperation (Spencer 2013; Turchin
2010), the kind of collectivities emerging from these cooperation networks is related to the
interests of individuals and groups. Rational models, such as evolutionary ecology, focus on the
decision-making process in the logic of individual self-interest (Smith and Winterhalder 1992).
Humans are not only self-interested, however, since they have multiple interests, many of which
may overlap or even contradict one another (Roscoe 2013). When one shifts this basic
assumption of self-interest, one is prompted to consider whether or not cooperation occurred,
as well as what forms of cooperation existed simultaneously in specific historical moments. The
contingent nature of cooperation, and the dynamic social rearrangement derived from it, may
create situations in which individuals cooperate with people that are considered rivals or
adversaries in other situations (Carballo 2013b).
The social configuration resulting from a specific mode of cooperation is related to the
collective interest that guides it. Four characteristics can be highlighted (Carballo, Roscoe,
and Feinman 2014; Roscoe 2013). First, the objectives or the nature of the collective interest
 4 Cooperation during violent times

define the rewards and retributions of cooperation (i.e., contribution to feasts vs. warfare).
Second, the different interests are weighted against each other in order to have a balance in
expected benefits (i.e., subsistence vs. defence). Third, different interests may require different
scales of cooperation. Some would require the cooperation of a few households, while others
would benefit from the collaboration of a large portion of the community (i.e., maintenance of
large artificial irrigation systems). And fourth, the duration of the collective interest may
condition the temporality of cooperation. Ephemeral collective interests would result in the
formation of temporal ‘task groups’, while more enduring collective interests would result in the
formation of social groups.
Times of war have been considered one of the situations in which many interests may
succumb to collective need for defence (Roscoe 2013). Indeed, the defence of the community
is a problem that can be more efficiently advanced through collective action. The construction of
defensive infrastructure requires large labour pools. Strategies of defence (such as early warn-
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ing, the formation of combat parties, etc.) would also only have been possible through
cooperation between households in the community. While warfare can provide rewards
(Glowacki and Wrangham 2013), it is also a situation in which free-riding can put people
under threat. Refusing to cooperate with others can put a group at a numeric disadvantage
against enemies, and could result in negative outcomes such as the physical or social extermina-
tion of the group.
Roscoe (2013) clarifies the distinction between attack and defence interests in warfare, each
of them subject to the development of different social arrangements. His comparative ethno-
graphic research shows that while most of the people in a community cooperate in defensive
efforts, only a fraction of it participates in attacks. This suggests that the threat of attack – and
death – is a more powerful motivation for cooperation than any gain that can be obtained by the
exercise of coercive power. Moreover, it can be suggested that while defensive efforts can be
driven by collective action, attacks can be motivated by individual or small group interests (i.e.,
revenge, political ambitions, etc.). Consequently, in the succession of attacks, defences, and
retaliations, both collective action and the agency of war leaders intermingle to configure a very
dynamic political landscape.
In this article, I explore this dynamic aspect of cooperation presenting the case of the Final
Formative occupation of the Nepeña Middle Valley, and I analyse: (1) how cooperation was
driven by defensive interests, (2) the relative permanence of the threat of attacks, and (3) how
defensive collectivities differ from collectivities formed by other interests.

The Nepeña River Valley settlement survey

The Nepeña Valley is located around 350km north of the modern city of Lima, in the Region of
Ancash (Fig. 1). Like other Peruvian coastal valleys, a seasonal river, fed by rains in the
adjacent Andean Cordillera, irrigates the Nepeña Valley. This allows the growth of natural
vegetation and permits agriculture in an otherwise desert territory (ONERN 1972). The valley is
divided in three sections: the lower, middle and upper sections, being the zone of interest, the
Nepeña Middle Valley or Moro Pocket (Daggett 1984) a widening of the valley between 29 and
40km from the seashore.
 H. C. Ikehara 5
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Figure 1 Maps with the location of the Nepeña River Valley and the survey zone.

During the year 2012, an archaeological survey of 87.8km2 the Nepeña Middle Valley was
carried out in order to reconstruct regional sociopolitical trajectories during pre-Hispanic times.
The survey methods allowed the crew to record all the evidence of human occupation – from
low density sherd scatters to monumental complexes – defining spatial units of observation
(survey units) no larger than 1ha. For each survey unit, the density of artefacts on the surface
was recorded and the different chronological components were determined during the pottery
classification (Ikehara 2015; Chifeng International Collaborative Archaeological Research
Project 2011). The comparison between the average surface artefact density (normalized by
length of the period) and the estimated population (derived from the area of roofed space in
some preserved villages), permitted the author to obtain absolute estimates of population in each
survey unit. These estimates (population per century per unit of area) were used to reconstruct
the demographic scale and distribution in each period.
Five different periods were defined, from the Formative Period to the time of the Spanish
conquest. Following Peterson and Drennan (2005), tridimensional surfaces were created for
each period by the interpolation of demographic density values using the inverse distance to
power method in Surfer 10.0. Finally, the topography of the surfaces created with different
power values was used as a guide to determine the boundaries of areas with stronger inter-
household interaction, and in this way, defining supra-local communities or districts.
 6 Cooperation during violent times

The Nepeña Middle Valley during the Late and Final Formative

It was estimated that during the Late Formative (800–450 BC)1 there were between 1,240 and
1,870 people in the survey zone. Two districts were identified (Fig. 2), a large one – SLC101 –
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Figure 2 Composite maps including: (a) the topography of the Nepeña Middle Valley (contour lines of 50m
levels), (b) the population density and distribution (unsmoothed tridimensional surfaces), and (c) the
delimitation of districts (the name indicated as numbers, i.e., 204 is SLC204).
 H. C. Ikehara 7

and a small one – SLC102 – with 87 per cent and 8 per cent of the total population respectively.
The rest of the people were living scattered outside the boundaries of these districts. A large
town in the centre of the cultivable area concentrated around one third of the population of
SLC101, while the rest of the population was living in small clusters of dwellings in the
periphery of the district. While some people were already living in the hill slopes, no fortifica-
tion was identified for this period.
Two lines of evidence suggest that communities of the Nepeña Middle Valley was part of a
larger cultural network, known as Chavín Sphere of Influence (Burger 2008) or Cupisnique-
Chavín Religious Complex (Ikehara 2015). The first line of evidence is the finding of pottery
fragments of styles (and possible designs) similar to those that has been commonly found in
other ceremonial centres of the epoch. The second was the identification of a U-shaped
ceremonial centre, located in a low-density zone, and in between two population clusters.
U-shaped configurations have been considered attributes of Middle and Late Formative centres
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of this pan-regional tradition (Bischof 1997; Vega-Centeno 2000; Shibata 2010).

By the end of the Late Formative and the beginning of the Final Formative, the U-shaped
ceremonial centre was abandoned and a series of new ceremonial centres were planned and their
construction started. However, some of them were never finished, while others were modified
and finished with expedient structures. I suggest that this is an indication that traditional modes
of cooperation, focused around massive ceremonial aggregation, became obsolete by the end of
the Late Formative. At the same time, ritual practices of local scale emerged during the
following centuries (Ikehara 2015).
The Final Formative, starting around 450 BC, was characterized by an explosive population
growth and changes in the material culture. It was estimated that between 8,475 and 12,713
people were living in the survey zone during that time and this increase may have been partially
the result of population migration between valleys. The tendency of aggregation continued and
led to the formation of towns with hundreds of people, a common feature for this period.
Populations were organized in at least ten supra-local communities or districts (Fig. 2). The
largest one, SLC201, contained around 29 per cent of the total population, while the others
contained between 3 and 12 per cent. By contrast with the previous period, several ceremonial
centres were built, and at least one was found in each district, suggesting an ongoing process of
political fragmentation. The preference of occupying terrain that was difficult to access, such as
hilltops and slopes, increased, suggesting an augmented or pervasive perception of threat. This
increased situation of violence is confirmed with the identification of thirty-seven fortresses and
outposts and several defensive wall systems built in the survey zone during this epoch.
Finally, with the end of the Cupisnique-Chavín Religious Complex, the long-distance
exchange network of exotics stopped. The situation of escalated violence characterized a large
part of the Coast and Highlands during this epoch (Arkush and Tung 2013), and this could have
been an impediment to the restoration of the trafficking of exotics during the Final Formative.
During the previous period (Late Formative), higher-ranked households had significantly more
exotic pottery than lower-ranked ones, and this may suggest that leaders had preferential access
to the long-distance exchange networks (Ikehara 2015). The collapse of this system may have
eroded the external dimension of their authority (Spencer 1993), leaving them in a situation
where only internal authority resources – faction building and local ritual practices – were
available. War leadership in a context of escalated violence must have provided them with a new
resource to build their position during this time. The set of changes observed in the settlement
 8 Cooperation during violent times

pattern suggests that a shift in the networks of cooperation and competition at a regional scale
was occurring after 450 BC, and these shifts were related in some way to an increased
perception of threat among the members of the communities.

Ritual collectivities

Cooperation in the communities was manifested not only in the formation of dense population
clusters, but also in the participation in ritual practices carried out in the ceremonial centres.
These ceremonies were one of the main mechanisms of social integration and reproduction, but
also provided contexts for authority building during the Middle and Late Formative (Dillehay
2004; Ikehara and Shibata 2008). The question remains whether the importance of these
practices continued during the Final Formative.
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The estimates of plaza audiences2 were contrasted with the available population in the
surroundings. In this way, catchments of audiences for the ceremonial centre of each district
were obtained. The minimum estimate considers only the audience of the largest plaza, while
the maximum estimate considers the combined area of all the plazas in the ceremonial centres.
During the Late Formative, both minimum and maximum audience estimates include more
people than those who were living in the survey zone. Consequently, the plaza in the U-shaped
ceremonial complex (Fig. 3) was designed to aggregate the regional population as a single ritual
collectivity. The unfinished buildings in the transition between the Late and Final Formative
were also designed to host audiences larger than a single district. By contrast, during the Final
Formative, the series of ceremonial centres (Fig. 3) built in the survey area were designed
mainly to host audiences coming from inside the districts, and sometimes only from the
immediate surrounding population (Fig. 4). Only two adjacent ceremonial centres, one inside
a district (SLC212) and the other outside, would have been able to gather an audience much
larger than the population district.
This analysis suggests that there was a change in the way people collaborated for ritual
purposes between the Late and Final Formative. If the participation in these ceremonies were
vehicles to reinforce and reproduce the membership to a social group and collaborate with their
leaders, this shift is an indicator of the generation of new social identities in the area as well as
the transformation of leadership and community fragmentation during the Final Formative.

Defensive collectivities

The collaboration within a group and compliance with leaders during times of war is condi-
tioned to the existence of pay-offs that may improve the chances of group survival. Better
organized defences and larger armies – which requires the coordination of large groups of
people – and defensive infrastructure – which requires a large amount of labour – are the kinds
of public goods expected in collectivities formed after defensive interests. If these defensive
investments are public goods, differences in the access to these investments should not exist
(Blanton and Fargher 2008; Carballo 2013b; Fargher and Blanton 2007). By contrast, if leaders
had a preferential access to or are better protected with this kind of infrastructure, it may suggest
 H. C. Ikehara 9
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Figure 3 Examples of ceremonial centres of the Late and Final Formative Period in the Nepeña Middle
Valley.

that these privileged households were capable of mobilizing resources and labour to build large
scale infrastructure for their own benefit.
During the Final Formative, the investment in defensive infrastructure in the survey zone was
concentrated in the construction of fortresses and outposts (Fig. 5), settlement defences such as
walls and moats, and systems of defensive walls far from the main habitation zones usually were
blocking natural pathways. I argue that the spatial distribution of defensive infrastructure in
relation to the location of the population can provide insights into the way defensive collectiv-
ities were formed during this epoch.
 10 Cooperation during violent times
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Figure 4 Map showing the catchments for minimum (dark grey) and maximum (light grey) audiences for
the largest ceremonial centres in each district.

Figure 5 Examples of fortresses of the Final Formative Period in the Nepeña Middle Valley.

Many settlements of the Final Formative were located in more easily defended positions and
some features were implemented to improve their defensibility. Moats were found surrounding
some towns, as well as walls added to ceremonial centres and towns to reduce accessibility.
 H. C. Ikehara 11
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Figure 6 Composite map including: (a) the population density (grey scale), (b) districts boundaries (dashed
lines), (c) the location of the largest ceremonial centres in each district (circles), (d) the location of the
fortresses and outlooks (black triangles), and (e) the systems of defensive walls (black lines).

However, these improvements were part of more complex nested defensive systems that
included the construction of wall systems and fortresses (Fig. 6).
In the south, only a long wall was built inside SLC212, connecting the main settlement with a
hill at the east, and limiting the access to or from the large dry ravine. However, with its little
more than 1.5m height and open areas in the sides, this wall would not have been very effective
against scattered groups of attackers. Instead it could have been a territorial marker of the
community. In contrast, the walls systems in the north half of the survey zone, especially in
SLC203, were a combination of 1.5 to 2m high walls placed one after the other, making it very
difficult to access the populated area through the small dry ravines or quebradas. Moreover, in
some places, small platforms were built in the sides of the ravines, that could have been
advantageous positions for defenders with rocks and slings. The large investment in these
kinds of fortifications suggests that these communities were expecting large-scale attacks. The
location of the wall systems in the northern half suggests a concern about attacks from outside
the survey zone. In fact, the natural pathways in this area connects the middle valley with the
lower valley, but also to the Lacramarca and Santa valleys.
The analysis of the spatial distribution of fortifications shows two patterns in the survey area.
In the northern half, the fortresses were built far from the major population concentrations
(Fig. 6). The central place of the district SLC201, the settlement and ceremonial complex of
Kushipampa, was located in the top of an alluvial terrace, and it was minimally protected by few
 12 Cooperation during violent times

shallow moats and one large wall located in the northeast. However, Kushipampa was sur-
rounded by a ring of eleven fortresses and outposts. An additional line of defence is found to the
southeast of this defensive ring, formed by three fortresses, potentially suggesting a concern
from attacks from that side, where SLC204 was located. To the west, the districts SLC203 and
206 were protected by three fortresses, each one built in the ridges at the top of the mountain.
By contrast, SLC202 and SLC205, despite being built in low hills, lacked of nearby fortresses.
Considering the similarity in monumental architecture detected between the public spaces of
SLC201 (Kushipampa), SLC202 (El Molino), and SLC205 (Paredones/San Isidro) (Ikehara
2015), it is possible that the members of these last two communities may have been allowed to
use the defensive infrastructure of the first one.
The location of the fortresses – far from the settlements – in the northern half of the valley
suggests the need for a system of early warning in order to have enough time for defence
preparations, including the mobilization of people to safer locations. A system of early warning
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would have required the cooperation of these five districts, despite their relative autonomy as
collectivities in ritual. Moreover, the complexity of this defence system seems to exceed what
could be needed to defend the communities against small-scale attacks – such as raids –
especially considering the demographic advantage for defence of districts such as SLC201
(around 3,000 people).
In the southern half of the survey zone, the fortresses were located adjacent to or in the middle
of the towns (Fig. 6). This close spatial association would have permitted the rapid reaction of the
community against attacks in nearby residences. This suggests that a system of early warning was
not employed at supra-local scales in this part of the survey zone; rather, it is evidence of the
atomization of the defensive effort between and inside these communities. At least fourteen
fortresses were built to provide protection and refuge for their surrounding population. The lack
of coordinated defence and the existence of low-density areas of occupation between clusters of
population may be an indication of intra-valley strife. In this part of the valley, only SLC212 – the
community attempting to extend their social networks by large-scale aggregation – lacked of any
surrounding fortress. Apparently, this community did not invest in defensive infrastructure; they
invested in creating the required social network to call for support in case of threat.
Whether this defensive infrastructure was built as a top-down initiative or as result of
collective action can be approximated by analysing who benefitted the most from these invest-
ments. The analysis was carried out comparing the distance – obtained by using path distance
tool in ArcGIS 10.1 – between every survey unit and the closest fortification. Then the survey
units were classified according to whether they corresponded to higher-3 or lower-ranked
households. The results of the analysis (Fig. 7) show that higher-ranked households had no
real advantage of access to these fortifications, since either the differences are very small or
lower-ranked are closer in average. Consequently it is very likely that community members built
fortifications for themselves and not for the leading families of the districts.

Cooperation in times of peace and warfare

The case of the Nepeña Middle Valley communities during the transition between the Late and
Final Formative provides a good example of the dynamic nature of cooperation. The aggregation of
households in clusters – villages or towns – is a mode of cooperation that was already present
 H. C. Ikehara 13
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Figure 7 Comparison with bullet graphs of the mean distance between fortresses and survey units with the
remains of higher ranked (black) and lower ranked (grey) people.

during the Late Formative, before violence became part of daily life. Kinship and economic
activities that requires larger-than-household labour pools must have encouraged this settlement
pattern (Drennan 1988; Stone 1993). Ritual aggregation in the ceremonial centre permitted the
creation of collectivities of regional scale, while leaders’ performance in these rituals and their
preferential access to long-distance networks of exotics enabled them to consolidate their authority.
During the Final Formative, the escalation of conflict made the interest in a community’s
defence a priority. This competitive and high-risk environment would have boosted cooperation
within groups, and the acceptance of new leadership. The construction of several ceremonial
centres designed to host the population from the surroundings is an indicator of the formation of
local group identities, while the distribution of the defensive effort suggests the existence of
complementary scales of cooperation. In the northern half a defensive coalition was formed,
while in the southern half this effort was atomized. The key difference between these two
sections is the evidence of external threat from the north. In other words, while on the southern
side the threat was very likely raids from their own neighbours, on the northern side, there was
an additional concern of attacks from the lower part of the valley or from other valleys such as
Santa and Lacramarca. This last situation would have encouraged the cooperation of multiple
districts or mutual survival.
These two kinds of threats, from their immediate neighbours in the survey zone and from an
external agent, would have been perceived differently. The unexpected, rapid and small-scale
attacks from their neighbours would have boosted the consolidation of local groups, while the
larger-scale external attacks would have helped in the formation of temporal alliances that
cooperated in defence. Large-scale threat was not frequent enough to force people to live
together, as occurred to Southern Highland communities during the Late Intermediate Period
 14 Cooperation during violent times

(Arkush and Tung 2013; Arkush 2011). Consequently, these two kinds of threat were the main
causes of the formation of local social groups and temporal collectivities, respectively.

Acknowledgements

The main fieldwork was funded by the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation
Improvement Grant No 1238352 and Geoeye Imagery Foundation. Preliminary research was
carried out by the support of the Department of Anthropology and the Center of Latin American
Studies of the University of Pittsburgh. The Ministerio de Cultura del Perú granted authorization
for conducting the research and supervised the fieldwork. The analyses were carried out in the
Laboratorios de Arqueología of the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú in Lima. I
thank Dr David Chicoine for reading and commenting on the first draft of this article, and to
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Rachel Chamberlin for proofreading the text. Finally, the comments and suggestion of Dr
Elizabeth De Marrais and two anonymous reviewers were insightful and very helpful in
improving the coherence of the text.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation
Improvement Grant No 1238352.

Notes

1 The chronology used in this article follows the general Andean sequence proposed by
Kaulicke (2010), and the local Nepeña Valley sequence proposed by Shibata (2010).
2 The methodology of the estimation of plaza audience is fully explained in Ikehara (2015).
Considering that ritual encounters occur at different scales of the society, it is very likely that
some of the ritual spaces must have been used only for the local group. Under this first
assumption, a local household group spatially associated with a small enclosure was identi-
fied. Then using the area of the plaza, and the population estimates of the associated dwell-
ings, a ratio of n people per m2 was obtained. Then, under the second assumption that this
ratio could be used for larger spaces, the audiences for plazas were obtained.
3 Higher-ranked people were identified using the proxy of the relative proportion of fine
pottery in the survey units’ collections. Collections of higher-ranked families were considered
those with fine pottery proportions higher than one standard deviation from the average of the
whole survey zone for that period. Not all the Final Formative collections from the survey
 H. C. Ikehara 15

units were used in the comparison. I considered proportions lower than 0.9 as households
remains, and proportions higher than 0.9 as ritual caches. Only those collections with more
than five sherds were used to avoid unrealistic high proportions caused by small samples.
These two decisions were arbitrary but it is better than using all the collections for the
comparison.

Hugo C. Ikehara
Departamento de Humanidades, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú,
Av. Universitaria 1801, San Miguel, Lima 32, Peru
hci1@pitt.edu
Downloaded by [Penn State University] at 20:00 25 January 2016

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Hugo C. Ikehara is an anthropological archaeologist who graduated from the Department of

Anthropology of the University of Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh, USA. Currently he is Adjunct
Professor at the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Peru, in Lima, Peru. His research focuses
on the social dynamics of complex societies in the Central Andes, with a special interest in the
transformation of the networks of cooperation and leadership in Formative societies of the North
Coast of Peru.