VOLUME 12 ISSUE 2

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Food Studies
An Interdisciplinary Journal

__________________________________________________________________________

Reconstituting Cuisine
A Culinary Perspective on Collapse, Conquest, and
Resistance from Pre-Columbian Peru

ROBYN E. CUTRIGHT

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 Reconstituting Cuisine: A Culinary Perspective on
Collapse, Conquest, and Resistance from
Pre-Columbian Peru
Robyn E. Cutright,1 Centre College, USA

Abstract: Cuisine is a powerful reflection of social and cultural identity. This paper reconstructs culinary change and continuity
on the pre-Hispanic north coast of Peru as a window into ancient experiences of collapse and conquest. Using archaeological
data from three sites in the Jequetepeque Valley between 600–1500 CE, I identify points of change as well as persistent patterns

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in how rural farmers procured, prepared, and consumed daily meals. By considering the nature and timing of changes, I suggest
that daily meals may have been a site of resistance and an expression of local cultural identity in the past.

Keywords: Cuisine, Archaeology, Andes, Peru, Collapse, Conquest

Introduction

T aste and culinary habits constitute, recreate, and make visible aspects of social identity.
Memories of how particular foods tasted and smelled connect us to home and family. Food
is one of the ways we tell ourselves who we are, and as such, it is deeply intertwined with
notions of culture and heritage; yet, culinary habits and taste can also be markers of difference
and ways of distinguishing “us” and “them” or making judgments about lifestyle, values, and
beliefs. Cuisine and taste are entwined with aspects of social identity such as socioeconomic class,
ethnicity, political values, and religion. Thus, archaeologists have used cuisine as a window into
social, political, and economic processes in past societies. This article employs a case study from
the ancient Andes of South America to demonstrate how archaeological reconstructions of cuisine
can help us understand local responses to large-scale social and political change and contribute
to broader conversations about taste, culinary habits, and social identity.
Using cuisine to document continuities and changes in daily rural life on the ancient north coast
of Peru, I investigate what it meant for Jequetepeque farmers and families to survive the breakdown
of the Moche political system and worldview around 850 CE. I also explore how local identities and
daily domestic practice shifted over the next few centuries, as the Jequetepeque Valley was
subsumed into the Chimú and then Inca empires. To do so, I will first briefly summarize how
archaeologists have approached the material evidence for cuisine and other aspects of domestic life
in the deep past. Then, I introduce the Jequetepeque Valley between approximately 600–1500 CE,
a period that encompasses sociopolitical collapse and multiple episodes of conquest, as a central
case study. By synthesizing multiple lines of evidence from my research at archaeological sites from
this period, I describe what changed and what did not in rural Jequetepeque Valley kitchens. Finally,
I suggest some ways in which archaeological reconstructions of culinary continuity and change can
shed light on the relationship between taste, cuisine, and social identity.

Archaeologies of Cuisine
Archaeology offers a deep time perspective on social change over centuries or even millennia by
studying the remains of the past that persist to the present. Studying what people ate in the past has
shed light on many important questions about ancient life (Cutright 2021a; Hastorf 2016; Twiss 2020),
1
Corresponding Author: Robyn E. Cutright, Anthropology and Sociology Program, Centre College, Danville, Kentucky,
40422, USA. email: robyn.cutright@centre.edu

Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

Volume 12, Issue 2, 2022, https://food-studies.com
© Common Ground Research Networks, Robyn E. Cutright, All Rights Reserved.
Permissions: cgscholar.com/cg_support
ISSN: 2160-1933 (Print), ISSN: 2160-1941 (Online)
https://doi.org/10.18848/2160-1933/CGP/v12i02/19-31 (Article)
FOOD STUDIES: AN INTERDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL

such as the origins of agriculture, emergence of inequality and sociopolitical complexity, and gender
and class dynamics in complex societies. While much archaeological attention was initially focused
on feasts and other special occasion meals that played a part in political competitions, rituals, and elite
displays of wealth and power (e.g., Dietler and Hayden 2001), archaeologists have more recently
emphasized the way that everyday meals also matter to our reconstructions of the past (Graff and
Rodríguez-Alegría 2012; Robin 2013; Smith 2010).
Archaeologists draw on both direct and indirect evidence to figure out what people in the
past ate. Diet, the actual foods consumed, can be gauged by looking at human remains themselves.
We are what we eat in a literal sense—food contributes to the chemical composition of our bones,

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so bone chemistry analysis can reveal details of diet and geography. On rare occasions, stomach
contents or paleofeces can be recovered and analyzed to reconstruct the final meals of individuals.
Cuisine refers not just to what people ate but how they combined ingredients into tasty and
satisfying meals, how they ate together, and how they thought about and through food. Without
textual evidence, past recipes, meals, and cuisines can be difficult to reconstruct. Indirect lines of
evidence can tell us something about the foods that were available but do not reflect exactly what
proportion of which items individuals actually consumed, much less what they meant or how they
were experienced. Indirect evidence includes remains of plants and animals (seeds, bones, shells)
in household trash and chemical residues inside cooking pots. The shapes and sizes of the vessels
that cooks chose and their distribution across kitchens and other domestic spaces can also reflect
culinary norms and traditions. Cuisine is shaped by and helps to express cultural meanings and
worldviews. While we eat a diet, we tend to think about food in terms of cuisine.
Although they can be difficult to access archaeologically, the cultural and culinary aspects
of ancient food provide a window onto past experiences, worldviews, and strategies of interest to
archaeologists. In this paper, I consider the stepwise process of making a meal in the ancient
Jequetepeque Valley, using various lines of evidence to reconstruct how food moved from
procurement through processing, storage, preparation, consumption, and discard. My goal is to
identify specific elements of continuity and change in everyday meals and to consider how they
might articulate with broader social, economic, or environmental changes such as the Moche
collapse or the Chimú conquest. In the next section, I briefly sketch the historical and ecological
context of the case study before returning to the central questions of this paper.

Historical, Cultural, and Ecological Setting

The Jequetepeque River flows west along the foothills of the Peruvian Andes and through a dry
coastal plain to the Pacific Ocean (Figure 1). Rain is infrequent and scant on the desert coast, so
ancient agriculturalists relied on irrigation canals drawn from the river to grow crops such as corn,
beans, and cotton in extensive field systems in the lower valleys. The cold Humboldt Current hugs
the Peruvian coast, creating remarkably rich marine ecosystems where ancient people fished, hunted
marine mammals like sea lions, and collected shellfish. They supplemented wild-caught seafood
with domesticated animals, such as guinea pigs, llamas, and dogs, and gathered wild resources
including land snails, mesquite pods and wood, and various herbs and fruits. Most foods were
probably procured directly by the families who consumed them, but goods were also exchanged
through kinship networks or reciprocal relationships between fishing and farming communities;
widespread market systems and currency were not a feature of local socioeconomic organization.

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Figure 1: Jequetepeque Valley, North Coast of Peru, showing sites mentioned in the text

People arrived in this region no later than 12,000 years ago. By two thousand years ago,
farming and fish communities were scattered through the Jequetepeque and neighboring river
valleys. A complex society with shared ritual and artistic traditions, called the Moche by
archaeologists, emerged on the north coast of Peru around 100 CE. During Moche times, each
river valley had at least one large urban and religious center. At these centers, elites and
craftspeople lived at the base of large adobe pyramids with brightly-painted friezes, where royalty
participated in rituals and was buried in elaborate golden regalia.
Around 600 CE, evidence from these urban centers suggests that the Moche underwent a
political and cultural shift, resulting in new forms of power and artistic styles (Trever 2022; Uceda
et al. 2021) (see Figure 2). Between 650–850 CE, foreign influence increased in Moche art and
architecture, and new artistic styles and priorities ultimately emerged (Lambayeque/Sicán in the
north, Casma in the south) (Trever 2022). Eventually, after 850 CE, Moche urban centers were
depopulated or renewed to foster new sociopolitical configurations. Archaeologists refer to this
transformation as the Moche collapse.
While archaeologists debate the roles of long-term drought, other climatic factors, stress from
the incursions of hostile neighbors, or an internal political crisis (Castillo 2001; Quilter and Koons
2012; Uceda et al. 2021), the archaeological record clearly demonstrates that while the Moche
collapse was not a violent event that caused widespread depopulation, it did represent significant
social change. Within the Jequetepeque Valley, some communities seem to have weathered this
time relatively unchanged (Zobler and Sutter 2015); yet, at a regional level, it seems clear that
people began to live on the landscape in new ways after the collapse. The decentralized, mobile
hinterland populations documented during the Moche period gave way to a more urban landscape
with stronger political centralization and heavy investment in irrigation infrastructure after the
valley was conquered by the Chimú and then Inca empires in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries
(Cutright 2015; Dillehay and Kolata 2004; Dillehay et al. 2022; Duke 2021).

Figure 2: Simplified Chronology of the Study Region

These broad regional changes were accompanied by changes in the rhythms of daily life and
local cultural traditions. People abandoned the use of figurines in household rituals, which had
been common in Moche households (Johnson 2021), and began instead to create burnt offerings

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in domestic spaces (Cutright 2013). Household culinary practice changed as well, even though
families were still making a living through familiar tasks of farming, fishing, and foraging. In this
paper, I use archaeological data from three communities in the Jequetepeque to document these
culinary changes in greater detail, with the goal of exploring what they can tell us about rupture
and resilience in the face of collapse.

Continuity and Change in Jequetepeque Valley Cuisine

Between 2006–2016, I conducted archaeological research at two communities in the

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Jequetepeque Valley, Pedregal and Ventanillas (Figure 1). Pedregal was a small farming
community, located between the river and large pre-Hispanic irrigated field systems about 10 km
from the Pacific Ocean (Cutright 2009, 2015). Excavations revealed an early occupation during
the Late Moche period and a later occupation that spanned the Chimú and Inka periods. Over
time, farmers at Pedregal produced more corn and cotton, likely exported as a tribute to elites at
nearby Farfán (a regional political center built after the Moche collapse and later conquered by
the Chimú and then the Inca).
Another post-Moche settlement, Ventanillas, was probably abandoned after the Inca
conquered the Jequetepeque Valley. It was a much larger community than Pedregal, with three
large adobe pyramids surrounded by a cluster of residential compounds (Cutright 2021b). Located
at a strategic point between the coast and the highlands, at the origin of irrigation canals that fed
lower valley fields, Ventanillas was likely a site of political negotiation between local middle
valley residents and Chimú administrators. At both sites, my excavations emphasized domestic
contexts in order to recover evidence of household production and cuisine.
Guy Duke’s (2017, 2021) research at Wasi Huachuma provides additional comparative
evidence for Moche plant and animal use in the lower Jequetepeque. Wasi Huachuma, located
several kilometers north of Pedregal, was periodically occupied by itinerant farmers over the
course of the Late Moche period. I also draw on a wider background of archaeological data from
Pacatnamú (Gumerman 1991) and Farfán (Cutright 2013; Mackey 2009) to characterize broader
patterns in Jequetepeque cuisine. In this paper, I focus on three of the steps through which food
moved from field and sea to ancient table: procurement, preparation, and consumption. I argue
that while the outlines of Moche and Chimú cuisine were not that different, they reflect the agency
of rural families. Cooks reprioritized, reshaped, and also maintained daily meals in specific ways
as a response to broader political and cultural changes.

Procurement

While environmental fluctuations such as periodic and occasionally very strong El Niño-Southern
Oscillation events brought unusual, sometimes catastrophic rainfall to the coast, and ice core data
records periodic episodes of drought across the broader region (Caramanica et al. 2020; Shimada
et al. 1991), there is no evidence of dramatic environmental differences between the Moche and
the Chimú periods. I expect, therefore, for the broad outlines of diet to remain constant across
time. However, priorities or tastes may have shifted to emphasize different ingredients or
ecosystems. To reconstruct procurement, I compare Moche faunal and botanical macroremains
excavated at Wasi Huachuma (Duke 2017) to those I recovered from Moche and Chimú
occupations at Pedregal (Figure 3).

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Figure 3: Example of Plant Macroremains from Pedregal during the Sorting and Analysis Phase

To compensate for differences in preservation and data collection strategies between the two
sites, I compare species ubiquity across the sites and occupations rather than the total count or
density of identified remains. Ubiquity represents the percent of total samples that contained a
particular species. The most common plant and animal species are shown in Figure 4 (see Cutright
2009 and Duke 2017 for more detailed descriptions of these species).

Figure 4: Most Ubiquitous Plant and Animal Species at Wasi Huachuma and Pedregal

The rough outline of animal procurement and use remained relatively consistent. People ate
domesticated llamas and guinea pigs, heavily supplemented by fish from in- and offshore habitats.
Differences seem more structured by site than by chronology. For example, the set of fish species that
were most often present across Moche Pedregal is more similar to the set from Chimú Pedregal rather
than Moche Wasi Huachuma. Fish preferences could reflect access to different habitats traditionally
fished by members of each community or could relate to local identities and preferences.
Plant usage saw more change over time. There would not be a drastic upheaval in farming
practices until the Spanish invasion in the mid-1500s, which introduced new crops like sugar, wheat,
and, much later, rice. Not unexpectedly, corn remained a cornerstone of the diet across the Moche
and Chimú periods. However, non-food plants like cotton were more ubiquitous in Chimú
households than in Moche households. Previously, I interpreted this data to suggest that Chimú
farmers placed a greater emphasis on the production of raw materials for textiles, likely representing
an increased tax burden after the Chimú conquest (Cutright 2015). The Chimú are known to have
intervened in local food systems to extract tribute and supply workers (e.g., Pozorski 1979). Fruits,

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and especially guanábana/cherimoya (custard apple, Annona sp.), became much more ubiquitous
at Pedregal during the Chimú period compared to both Moche sites sampled. Data from the Moche
Valley (Pozorski 1979) shows that this shift occurred across the region. Guanábana trees may have
spread alongside the Chimú conquest, becoming more common in conquered valleys like the
Jequetepeque. Alternately, eating these fruits at home, where their seeds would become incorporated
into household trash, may have been associated in some way with being Chimú.
In many ways, food procurement remained stable from Moche to Chimú communities, as
community residents pursued mixed strategies of fishing, gathering, animal husbandry, and
farming. A careful focus on plant and animal assemblages, however, reveals local preferences

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and some changes in the rhythm of procurement and processing over time. Specifically, data
reveal a greater emphasis on growing economic staples such as corn and cotton and consuming
fruit grown in trees around the edges of fields and canals in Chimú households.

Preparation

After plants and animals were procured from the field, sea, or exchange partners, they were
processed (butchered, dried, husked, ground) to become ingredients. Ingredients could be stored
within houses; excavations at Pedregal and Ventanillas revealed the rounded imprints of large
ceramic storage vessels in house floors (and, twice, an entire vessel left standing in situ) as well
as plastered storage pits. Food could also have been stacked in the rafters or hung from walls as
in contemporary houses in the region. At some point, cooks selected ingredients and transformed
them into meals in the next phase of the culinary process: preparation.
Many lines of archaeological evidence, from the spatial organization of the kitchen to the
transformation of ingredients themselves into charred bone fragments and spent grains, speak to
food preparation. I focus here on utilitarian ceramics as culinary equipment central to food
preparation practices. Because different vessel shapes have different culinary purposes—deep round
pots are suitable for boiling soups and stews, while flat plates are not, for example—the suite of
vessels used by cooks can tell us something about the kinds of recipes cooks preferred to prepare.
Dramatic changes in elite ceramic style accompanied the Moche collapse and Chimú conquest.
Moche elite pots were molded into figures of humans, plants, animals, and other beings or featured
elaborate scenes finely drawn in red paint on a cream background. In the Jequetepeque, vessels
buried in an elite graveyard at a site called San José de Moro began to show more foreign influence
from highland Wari and Cajamarca societies as well as the Sicán state to the north near the end of
the Moche period, and eventually, the characteristic Moche style was no longer produced by local
artisans (Castillo 2001). The Chimú conquest brought with it new elite styles, most notably a
profusion of highly-polished, reduction-fired blackware molded into bottles and plates with
geometric motifs or made in the shape of plants, animals, humans, and other figures (Mackey 2009).
These shifts do not reflect the introduction of new technological expertise or methods (molds, the
process of reduction firing, and geometrical and plant/animal motifs were present during the
preceding Moche phase) but rather a new aesthetic and/or symbolic vocabulary.
Accompanying this change in elite style preferences was a shift in everyday ceramics for
domestic use (see Figure 5 for some common vessel forms for cooking and serving food). One of
the forms that changed most in Jequetepeque rural kitchens is the olla or cooking pot. A typical
Moche cooking vessel was a high-necked jar, often with a molded face and simple white-painted
decoration. A typical Chimú pot was shorter, squatter, with a curved or carinated rim, often
decorated with an irregular white band. Post-Moche ollas often had molded geometric bands or
stamped designs. As with elite wares, the changes in utilitarian vessels do not reflect the adoption
of radically new technologies. Local clay sources continued to be used, and firing technologies
remained similar. The one notable technological change, the adoption of the paddle-and-anvil
method, is discussed below as it reflects a shift in both decoration and production methods.

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Archaeologists associate both forms with a focus on wet preparations like soups and stews.
The preponderance of ollas at the Moche and Chimú sites suggests that these recipes remained
common, but changes in size and use suggest that Chimú cooks had new priorities. Because most
ceramics from domestic contexts are highly fragmented, I use the rim diameter of the cooking pot
mouth fragments as a proxy for vessel size. At Pedregal, the average diameter went from 16 cm
during the Moche phase to just under 11 cm during the Chimú phase, a statistically significant
difference. Cooking pots also made up a greater proportion of the overall set of vessels used at
Pedregal over time (Cutright 2009). Chimú pots at Pedregal were much more likely than Moche
pots to show signs of soot from having been placed directly over cooking fires, suggesting a shift

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in cooking habits (Cutright 2009). As the centuries passed, evidence from Pedregal suggests that
Chimú cooks preferred smaller cooking pots in their kitchens and used them differently.
The way in which ollas were formed and decorated changed at both Pedregal and Ventanillas
and across the region at sites like Pacatnamú and Farfán after the Moche collapse, and it then
remained relatively continuous through the Lambayeque, Chimú, and Inca periods. The paddle-
and-anvil technique, in which potters use a flat wooden paddle to thin and shape the walls of the
clay pot against a round stone or “anvil” held inside the curve of the vessel wall, spread across
the north coast of Peru during the post-Moche Lambayeque period (Cleland and Shimada 1998).
Potters used patterned paddles to impart geometric designs to the surface of ollas. The diversity
of these designs was greatest during the Lambayeque period, but paddle-stamped ollas continued
to be produced throughout the sequence and are still being made today by local itinerant potters
in the Jequetepeque. Paddle-stamping technology did not change the kinds of dishes that could
be cooked in ollas, but it did reflect a technical and aesthetic preference that proved remarkably
resistant to change once it entered local kitchens.

Figure 5: Selected Olla and Bowl Shapes from Late Moche and Post-Moche Pedregal and Ventanillas

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Cooks in Moche and Chimú kitchens all prepared a lot of stews but used subtly different
kitchen assemblages to do so. The predominance of smaller ollas might indicate a new focus in
Chimú kitchens on specialized dishes, sauces, or other preparations like sauces made in smaller
quantities. It might also suggest that food was prepared for smaller social groups. It seems clear
that some new widespread preparation preferences or constraints accompanied the dramatic
stylistic shift in utilitarian assemblages from Moche to Chimú kitchens.
Consumption
The final stage of the meal that I consider here is consumption. A specific set of foods is prepared

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according to accepted recipes to create a meal and are presented in an appropriate way and consumed
by a group of people. Because excavations at Pedregal and Ventanillas emphasized residential areas
and domestic trash, data reflect the remains of meals built up over generations rather than specific
events or dishes. I rely here on ceramic vessels as one window onto how food was eaten in Moche
and Chimú households, focusing on bowls and plates used to serve and consume meals.
In general, serving vessels in Moche and Chimú contexts tend to be bowls or high-rimmed
plates that would have been perfect for the soups and stews prepared in the ollas described above.
Ceramic bowls are very rare in rural Moche household assemblages at Pedregal and elsewhere.
Instead, people probably ate from perishable gourd bowls, which are commonly found containing
food in burials (e.g., Cutright 2011; Gumerman 1994). Beginning after the Moche collapse,
farmers began to eat out of ceramic bowls. Over the subsequent Lambayeque, Chimú, and Inca
periods, new shapes and decorations proliferated in rural household assemblages, even while
gourd bowls likely persisted. Some bowls were painted with red cursive designs, imported from
the Jequetepeque Valley foothills, while others had geometric bands press-molded on the exterior
or had bands of white slip around the interior rim (Figure 5). By the late Chimú and Inka periods,
these local bowls were supplemented by flat-bottomed, high-rimmed burnished black plates based
on Imperial Chimú designs. Bowls represented 15 percent of all vessels at Pedregal and 30 percent
of the ceramics recovered from the domestic sector of Ventanillas. This high proportion of bowls
may reflect the importance of serving food and drink at feasts held at small platform-patio venues
within Ventanillas households (Cutright 2021b).
After the Moche collapse, it became imperative for rural farmers to serve at least some food
in ceramic bowls. Bowls were so important, conceptually, to post-Moche cuisine that they formed
part of a basic funerary set placed in burials from the immediately post-Moche Lambayeque
period at Farfán (Cutright 2011). Ceramic bowls were an essential piece of the culinary package
that emerged after the Moche collapse, and they persisted, expanding under Chimú and Inca rule
to embrace more variety in shape, size, and decoration. Unlike the increasing focus on the
production of corn and cotton described above, it is difficult to imagine this change being coerced
by Chimú administrators. Rather, it likely represents a shift in what was considered to be
culturally and culinarily appropriate for household consumption after the Moche collapse.
Discussion
Exploration of data from Moche and Chimú households in the Jequetepeque Valley reveals many
broad continuities in diet and cuisine between 600–1500 CE. Before and after the Moche collapse,
people procured food from open-water, coastal, agricultural, and desert ecosystems. Not every
community obtained the same foods, as illustrated by the differences between the two Moche
communities of Pedregal and Wasi Huachuma. People ate soups and stews and drank fermented
maize beverages, among other less archaeologically visible preparations. In some senses, not
much changed from Moche to Chimú times in the general outline of Jequetepeque cuisine.
This continuity is notable in the context of the political instability that might be expected to
accompany episodes of collapse and conquest, especially given valley-wide shifts in population
structure and agricultural infrastructure that accompanied these episodes (Dillehay and Kolata 2004;

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Dillehay et al. 2022). Cuisine’s deep connections to everyday embodied practice, lived experiences of
home and family, and cultural ideals make foodways highly resistant to change (Hastorf 2016). Crown
(2000) argues that cuisine changes to reflect resource availability or new economic trade-offs but
otherwise remains conservative. From this perspective, we would not expect cuisine to change
radically in the Jequetepeque until the Spanish conquest introduced new foods and deeply altered local
communities, political structures, and economic systems (VanValkenburgh 2021); yet, the data
discussed here reveal that some daily practices, traditions, and expectations were notably different in
Moche and post-Moche households contrary to the expectations of authors like Crown and Hastorf.
The shift of culinary priorities and daily household activities as intimate as eating fruit, serving

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food in ceramic bowls, and using figurines in domestic rituals after the Moche collapse suggests
that the end of the Moche period was felt even by rural farmers as a social rupture. Hinterland
residents felt the Moche collapse not only as a crisis of elite leadership but as a profound cultural
shift that reached into their homes and daily lives. Cooks emerged post-Moche with new priorities
and preferences for foods, dishes, and cookware. These preferences and patterns then continued
through the later Chimú and Inca conquest of the valley, suggesting that conquest did not resonate
in the same way at the household level as collapse had generations earlier.
If the culinary data are correct in indicating that collapse was experienced as a rupture by rural
households but the conquest was not, what does this tell us about the wider social processes involved?
Collapse sparked a fundamental rethinking of settlement patterns, agricultural production, political
power, and belief systems, but for local rural families, regime change may have simply meant sending
corn to elites at Farfán rather than Pacatnamú or fitting more cotton into field rotations to meet taxation
requirements. One possibility is that rural households and cuisine are simply governed by local
priorities and agrarian rhythms; they thus remained largely unaffected by regional processes. However,
we have seen that this was not the case during the Moche collapse; local households did experience
some clear changes. Under what conditions, then, do regional political and economic processes spark
social change or continuity at the local level? In this case, it might be that local continuity was the
result of intentional strategies on the part of imperial administrators. Alternatively, we could explain
continuity in terms of the strategies and priorities of local cooks.
Imperial administrators in the Andes often chose to rule indirectly (D’Altroy and Hastorf 2001).
When local political and economic hierarchies were well-developed, it was more efficient for
conquerors to simply graft their own administration onto existing systems. Indirect rule tends to
support greater local continuity, while direct rule means that empires reach directly into local
communities to reorganize them (D’Altroy and Hastorf 2001). To evaluate whether the continuity
we observe after the Moche collapse is due to the strategies designed by imperial administrators, we
need to evaluate the overall evidence for the Chimú and the Inca administration of the Jequetepeque
and other conquered valleys.
In Moche times, rural hinterland sites were ethnically Moche but politically semi-autonomous,
and farmers were residentially mobile to some extent (Duke 2021; Swenson 2019; Swenson and
Warner 2016). While it seems likely that the Chimú, like the Inca after them, employed a mosaic of
political strategies in conquered provinces (Cutright 2015; Mackey 2009), the extent of rural
incorporation into hierarchical political and economic systems probably did increase sharply under
Chimú and Inca rule (Dillehay et al. 2022). Carol Mackey has suggested that the Chimú and the
Inca adopted very different administrative strategies in interacting with conquered populations in
the Jequetepeque, with the Chimú exerting more direct control over local politics (Mackey 2011).
In other words, the reconsolidation of post-collapse life in the Lambayeque period and then
subsequent conquests by the Chimú and the Inca empires using different strategies should mean that
a lot changed in the Jequetepeque Valley for conquered farmers.
Thus, I suggest that continuities in household practice are likely to represent, at least in part,
deliberate strategies of persistence and resilience on the part of local households. Robin (2013)
suggests that daily life matters as a site where microscale interactions and experiences articulate with
macroscale political processes. Change does not need to be dramatic or imposed by external forces;

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it can happen through everyday actions if people begin to question or transform relations of power. By
recognizing the potential for social change inherent in everyday life and the agency of local farmers,
Robin concludes that both continuity and change require social maintenance. From this perspective,
archaeologists need to explain not only how collapse reshaped cuisine but also why local cooks would
keep using similar ingredients in similar dishes in the face of the changes in settlement patterns,
agricultural production, and political structure that accompanied the Chimú and Inka conquest.
Continuity, like change, requires explanation.
Food and daily meals are central to family and local identity (Hastorf 2016). Jequetepeque cooks
during the Chimú and later Inca imperial rule might have actively worked to conserve important

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aspects of cuisine in the face of broader change. Rural households absorbed greater labor demands to
produce and process more corn and cotton for administrators at sites like Farfán while maintaining the
overall outlines of familiar daily meals. Families hosted feasts within residential compounds at
strategically important sites like Ventanillas to negotiate political power with Chimú administrators
while maintaining local middle valley ethnic traditions and exchange networks (Cutright 2021b). I
argue here that because of the rupture in daily household practices we observe after the Moche
collapse, we should read continuity in these practices through subsequent conquests as reflecting local
adaptation to, and even resistance against, changing external political conditions.
This paper compares the culinary practices documented during the Moche and Chimú
occupations of three sites in the Jequetepeque Valley and offers some preliminary meditations on
the relationship between cuisine, collapse, and conquest that I hope will spark future archaeological
research. While archaeological data is not always well-suited to answering questions about causality
and intentionality, more data on domestic culinary practice in other communities would help
confirm and clarify the patterns discussed here. Because the Moche collapse and the Chimú
conquest played out differently across the north coast, future research should continue to explore
local dynamics of change and continuity in other valleys. More careful chronological control will
also help to clarify the temporal relationships between the various changes noted here.
I also hope this paper will engage the imaginations of food researchers working in other
disciplines, though the industrialized food systems of our current globalized economy look very
different from those discussed here; yet, today, as in the ancient Jequetepeque, cuisine sits at the
intersection of ecology, economy, and cultural identity, and as such, it can be an important tool
for cultural resilience or resistance to change. Under some conditions, daily culinary practices
may help households adapt to changing conditions as cooks incorporate new ingredients or
preparation techniques to achieve culturally and culinarily appropriate dishes. At the same time,
they may be a site of resistance to change, a touchstone that cooks actively work to protect and
conserve. Ultimately, culinary responses to the Moche collapse and the Chimú conquest in the
Jequetepeque suggest that local experiences of change must be addressed through microscale,
bottom-up perspectives that consider the possibilities and constraints of local agency and the role
of cuisine in local identities and cultures.
Acknowledgment
Archaeological excavations were co-directed by Lic. Jorge Terrones Cevallos (Pedregal 2006),
Dr. Gabriela Cervantes Quequezana (Ventanillas 2011 and 2013), and Lic. Carlos Osores
Mendives (Ventanillas 2016) and were approved and supervised by the Ministry of Culture of
Peru. Work on this project was supported by the Fulbright Commission, the Wenner-Gren
Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Social Science Research Council, the Curtiss T.
and Mary G. Brennan Foundation, and the Centre College Faculty Development Council. Data
from Wasi Huachuma was graciously provided by Guy Duke. Special thanks to the communities
of Pacasmayo, Faclo, Pay Pay, and Ventanillas and the excavation and lab crews that aided in
data collection and analysis. Thank you to the anonymous reviewers for their helpful feedback.
All errors in interpretation are my own.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Robyn E. Cutright: Marlene and David Grissom Associate Professor of Anthropology,
Anthropology and Sociology Program, Centre College, Danville, KY, USA

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 Downloaded by ProQuest Content on Mon Apr 03 2023 at 10:12:24 AM CDT
Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal explores
new possibilities for sustainable food production and
human nutrition. It provides an interdisciplinary forum for
the discussion of agricultural, environmental, nutritional,
health, social, economic, and cultural perspectives on
food. Articles range from broad theoretical and global
policy explorations to detailed studies of specific human-
physiological, nutritional, and social dynamics of food.
The journal examines the dimensions of a “new green
revolution” that will meet our human needs in a more
effective, equitable, and sustainable way in the twenty-
first century.

As well as papers of a traditional scholarly type, this

journal invites case studies that take the form of
presentations of practice—including documentation
of socially engaged practices and exegeses analyzing
the effects of those practices.

Food Studies: An Interdisciplinary Journal

is a peer-reviewed, scholarly journal.

ISSN 2160-1933