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ARTICLE

Copyright 2004 SAGE Publications (www.sagepublications.com)

ISSN 1469-6053 Vol 4(2): 239268 DOI: 10.1177/1469605304042396

Social landscape and ritual pause

Uncertainty and integration in formative Peru
TOM D. DILLEHAY
Department of Anthropology, University of Kentucky, USA

ABSTRACT
In the study of emergent complexity, little attention has been given
to the strategies employed by autonomous household-based
communities to overcome the social risks and uncertainties of initial
integration and how these strategies can be examined archeologically.
Such strategies can be designed to slow the integrative process and to
provide small-scale communities with the opportunity to negotiate the
form of emerging social cohesion. The Late Initial Period of Peru (c.
15001000 BC) presents a case study in which households are integrated for the first time at public ceremonies that were influenced or
organized by a centralizing external ideology. The archeological
evidence at San Luis, a U-shaped mound complex in the Zana Valley,
Peru, suggests the use of segmented ritual spaces and rhythmic, timeextended ritual pauses by households to ensure social harmony and to
deter or delay movements toward political centralization. The
broader implications of these developments are discussed for early
complex societies.

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KEYWORDS
integration landscape

Peru

place

politics

ritual

INTRODUCTION
The process of establishing social integration and political centralization in
early complex societies has primarily been treated by anthropologists as if
it was a self-evident reality in which a minority of emerging elites organized, integrated, and ruled people (e.g. Fried, 1967; Service, 1975).1 Until
recently, archeologists had mainly employed hierarchical models of centralization and inequality to explain various forms of social interaction and
power relations between rulers and commoners (Anderson, 1996; Blanton
et al., 1996; Brumfiel, 1994; Clark and Blake, 1994; Crumley, 1995; Dobres
and Robb, 2000; Feinman, 2000). Commoners have generally been viewed
as the products of social inculcation to which they were subjected in
exchange relations, ideological indoctrination, and public gatherings at
special places (Bender, 1995; Earle, 1991; Flannery, 1976; Hayden, 1995;
Hill and Clark, 2001; Upham, 1990). Although useful for examining certain
aspects of social relations, these models have often been shortsighted. They
have presumed passive acquiescence on the part of commoners and
overemphasized the extent to which autonomous communities were
molded by social processes to become part of a hierarchic collective.
Underemphasized is the presence of communities that questioned, resisted
or moved slowly towards these developments by organizing non-centralized, communal efforts to integrate on their own terms (Arnold, 1995;
Crumley, 1995; Giddens, 1984; Pauketat, 2000; Price and Feinman, 1995;
Sherratt, 1990). When pressures are placed on communities by changing
social landscapes, they may respond in different ways (Dietler and Hayden,
2001; Ehrenreich et al., 1995; Hayden, 1995; McIntosh, 1999; Mehrer, 2000;
Renfrew and Cherry, 1986) by organizing along various dimensions of hierarchic, heterarchic and horizontal complexity that represent differing but
competing forms of social constructs.
In regions of the world where early complex societies emerged, it is not
always clear whether integration and/or centralization occurred rapidly or
gradually, whether it was negotiated between non-elites and ruling elites,
or whether it ever developed. Despite the efforts of local leaders, there
must have been risk and uncertainty attached to agricultural or other forms
of economic intensification, adoption of innovations, increased congregation and coordination of activities, and increased differences in access to
resources, with the notion that their integration on a collective, interhousehold level eventually would lead to socialization, differential power,
and hierarchy (Carneiro, 1981; Fried, 1967; Spriggs, 1984). Not all public

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goal-oriented politics, however, require formal leadership and centralized

relations (Burger, 1992; Swartz, 1968: 36). Integrative processes of socialization, as well as the routine and continuous inculcation of values and
beliefs in exchange systems, public works such as road and irrigation
systems, and special ceremonies, also could have played vital roles in
endowing autonomous households with the social skills that could have led
to self-directed communal modes of production (Keene, 1991; also see
Arnold, 2000; Dillehay, 1992; Saitta, 1997).
A critical question to explore, and the issue on which I focus this essay,
is whether ruled by hierarchical or other forms of order, some small-scale
communities acting as independent units were capable of distancing themselves from large-scale, centralizing integrative processes to which they
were subjected, of reflecting on and perhaps contesting these processes, and
establishing a pace or tempo of social integration on their own terms at
periodic public ceremonies, particularly in times of the risk and uncertainty
that must have been associated with early societies adopting new technological forms of production and being exposed to new ideologies of social
cohesion. I argue that a distancing strategy gave these communities the time
and circumstances to define the conditions of integration and to accelerate,
deter or negotiate centralization on their own terms. Bourdieu (1990) refers
to these conditions as crisis moments in doxa: that is, those times and places
where people question a change or the status quo for the good of the population during an intense or uncertain moment the crisis of concern in this
study being an emergent agrarian lifeway probably associated with the
emergence of irrigation systems, increased contact between neighboring
communities, and the spread of an integrative pan-Central Andean
religious ideology2 to a local community in the Formative Late Initial
Period (c. 15001000 BC) of Peru.
Crucial to my understanding of emergent complexity is the spatial and
temporal ordering of a society, which structures and is structured by social
action. Geographical literature has shown that the meaning of spaces and
places are historically and socially constituted and vary through time (e.g.
Harvey, 1989; Keith and Pile, 1993; Miller, 1995). The meaning of a place
affects the types of events carried out in it and vice versa. Time, like space,
is socially constituted and as such also carries meaning. Culturally produced
concepts of time are shaped by and enacted through social practices, which
are structured and synchronized by places (Adam, 1995; Levine, 1997;
Zerubavel, 1981). That is, people socially structure the pace or tempo of
their activities just as they locate them in built environments. What results
is a cycle of meanings, actions, tempos, and places influencing, constituting,
and structuring each other. Social power arises from the temporal, spatial
and other relationships between actors in a mutually acknowledged
competitive or cooperative context of daily routines and practices. In
societies undergoing intense social change, these practices often create and

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Figure 1 General location of the Zana Valley in Peru and of the San Luis site
and Initial Period household sites in the valley
are created by new ways of experiencing time and space that alter the pace
of life and produce new places to accommodate events associated with
change. These experiences often result in what Harvey (1989: 220)
describes as time-space compressions the technological, ideological,
political, and/or economic conditions that accelerate the transportation of
goods and the communication of new ideas across space. In this sense, both
space and time are reduced in scale and scope by innovative time-space
instruments to achieve societal goals. Examples are the rapid pace and
spread of socio-economic development spurred by the nineteenth century
industrial revolution, the quick movement of people from one place to
another by rapid transit systems, the global transmission of information
within seconds by computers, and all-purpose assembly plants (e.g. Ford
Company) for more cost-efficient production. In a similar but reversed way,
I believe that other or similar instruments can act in the capacity of
timespace extensions; that is, to expand rather than compress time and/or
space to intentionally slow or retard certain developments or practices.
Modern-day examples are the slow-food movement begun in Italy that
was designed to shift the increasingly rapid global consumption of cheap

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fast foods back to locally produced, exquisitely prepared and healthier

home-cooked meals, and President Clintons town hall meetings in the
1990s that were created to slow national political agendas to include more
local and regional voices. I suggest that instruments of time-space compression and extension are not limited to the modern era, but also existed in
the preindustrial past as media to increase, slow, change or deter broad
social, economic and cultural movements.
The purpose of this article is to analyze a crisis moment by studying the
emergent conditions of social integration and the probable deterrence of
political centralization among autonomous households associated with the
public ceremonial site of San Luis in the Zana Valley on the north coast of
Peru during the Late Initial Period (Figure 1). I suggest that local households in the valley developed ritualized and individualized timespace
extensions at special U-shaped ceremonial monuments at San Luis in order
to adjust to a newly introduced integrative ideology and to negotiate a
locally specific form of integration and deterrence. I also argue that household-based communities in early societies can respond in different ways to
the pressures placed on them by changing social conditions, that different
forms of social relations can be negotiated between small-scale local
communities and large-scale processes placing pressure on them, and that
these relations can be integrated through small-scale, individualized ritual
activities. On a regional level, the result is a pluralistic society comprised
of various communities defined by different but probably competing social
constructions.
Two primary themes run throughout this article. The first is the way in
which ceremonial landscape, the U-shaped monuments at San Luis, the
sites social tempo and ritual calendar were used by local households to
slow, guide and structure a new but negotiable ideological experience (see
later discussion on the nature of this ideology, insofar as we can understand
it archeologically), and to socially integrate themselves on their terms in
times of new risks and uncertainties. This experience had to secure the
adherence of individual households to the collective social order, to provide
the symbolic glue that unified this order and bonded household members
to it, and to allow different households to share power and to participate
in collective activity and ritual at San Luis in negotiable unranked ways.
Important to the success of sharing power was equal access of all households to construct individual ritual spaces at San Luis and to periodically
perform or share ritual time that is, to establish a collective rhythm in
ceremony. Although not yet defined archeologically, I suspect that an integrative, valley-wide irrigation system played a crucial role in motivating
local groups to collectively organize themselves to share water and to make
important decisions about their livelihood (Williams, 1985). Major dietary
shifts were taking place at this time with more groups moving farther inland
away from the coast to exploit fertile agricultural lands and to establish

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water networks (Burger, 1992: 111; Moseley, 2001: 99102). Such moves
surely necessitated greater integration. Second, I believe that small-scale
communal activity worked at San Luis, because it was based on an ideology
that appealed to people living under different circumstances; it was
designed to show autonomous households how to agree and how to integrate socially. Crucial to this design was periodic ceremony that was constituted by timespace extensions or pauses and breaks in ritual action, which
allowed for power sharing across different households and fostered a selfdirected collective solidarity by means of consensus management and by
belief in a corporate cognitive code (Blanton et al., 1996: 57) a new
community-based religious ideology (Burger, 1992). Prior to presenting the
archeological evidence for these patterns, I will discuss briefly the Initial
period in Peru and some concepts that guide my thinking.

UNCERTAIN TIMES IN PERU

The Late Preceramic and Late Initial periods (c. 35001000 BC) in Peru
were times of major ideological, social and economic transformation, intensive agricultural, maritime and pastoral economies, increased corporate
labor, the appearance of great art styles, U-shaped monumental architecture, a widespread integrative religion to promote and legitimize these
transformations, and increased population growth and interaction
(Bonavia, 1991; Burger, 1992; Lavallee, 2000; Moseley, 2001; Quilter, 1991).
Some local communities were more strongly affiliated than others as
suggested by shared ceramic, iconographic, and architectural styles
(Burger, 1992; Donnan, 1985; Isbell, 1976; Quilter, 1991). Some investigators view this uniformity as evidence for early state-like polities that
shared a centralized ideology (Feldman, 1985; Haas, 1982; Keatinge, 1981;
Pozorski and Pozorski, 1987a, 1987b; Shady et al., 2001). There also are a
wide variety of local and regional styles, which casts doubts on widespread
political and ideological centralization. Further, little archeological
evidence exists in the form of elite burials, craft specialization and exchange
for the purpose of accumulating personal wealth and for establishing status
and power among a few leaders, and centralized and elaborate houses to
substantiate social classes and permanent hierarchical rulers. Opposing
views on the political nature of these early communities rest primarily on
the degree to which stylistic diversity or unity reflects centrality. It is most
likely that the Initial Period was characterized by a plurality of communities organized on different hierarchic, heterarchic, and horizontal levels
(Burger, 1992; Burger and Salazar, 1986; Dillehay, 1992, 1999; Quilter,
1991). The Late Preceramic and Late Initial periods (25001000 BC) culminated in the Chavin culture (c. 1000200 BC), which forged greater cultural

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and social unity from a multitude of regional cultural traditions (Burger,

1992; Tello, 1942).
Although the ideology of this period is not well understood, Burger
(1992: 37) perceives it as:
. . . organizational innovations in the central Andes [that] permitted the
large-scale mobilization of labor before the appearance of marked
socioeconomic stratification and the coercive state apparatuses that often
accompany it. At the heart of this Late Preceramic [and Initial Period]
innovation was the role of religious ideology in motivating collective efforts,
maintaining order, and perpetuating the system. . . . [This] was an ideology
which held that the community, not the individual, owned and controlled the
critical resources. Membership of the community was validated through
participation in communal activities, and failure to collaborate resulted in
social sanctions and eventually in limited access to land and water.

In adding to Burgers definition, I perceive this ideology as a flexible

doctrine of social construction that encouraged some populations to
socially integrate, perhaps with the intent to eventually organize themselves
at a higher level, and others to politically centralize by means of practicing
inter-household affiliation in U-shaped ceremonial places and in everyday
life routines. I believe that local communities influenced by or adopting this
ideology had choices about a range of social constructs and the strategies
used to make one or another prevail. As noted earlier, the end result was
a pluralistic Initial Period society characterized by multiple and co-existing
versions of this ideology that shared architectural and other styles and that
varied along various dimensions of hierarchy, heterarchy, and horizontal
complexity, with none of them dominating enough to eliminate the rest.
Between 2500 and 1500 BC, if not earlier, this ideology had spread and
transformed most other coastal and highland valleys into a symbolic and
social nexus for local communities and eventually brought them into valleylong and, in some parts, regional spheres of religious, social and economic
interaction. When this ideology later arrived in the Zana Valley (c.
14001200 BC), local communities opted for a horizontal, communal form
of social integration whereby authority was rotated and shared among
households. It is not known whether the adoption of this ideology and its
associated ceramic styles and U-shaped monuments was achieved by
emulation or imposition. For reasons not presently understood, only certain
elements of this ideology are present at San Luis. Some major iconographic
elements are absent; shared but decadent U-shaped monumental and
ceramic styles are present. In my opinion, this suggests partial emulation of
the ideology by the Zana community.3

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IDEOLOGY, UNCERTAINT Y, AND RITUAL TEMPO AND

PLACE
Many social theories of ideology (Gramsci, 1973; Roscoe, 1993; Thompson,
1990) insist that people are not always imposed upon by dominant groups
but must be convinced that the ideas of a new social order will benefit them.
Domination, power and social order occur in the realm of meaning, a
formal political and ideological arena, and a temporal setting composed of
different groups within the society. Time is required to implement plans for
a new order and for groups to adjust to new conditions. Different groups
within the same society may have different plans that promote their
different ideas and interests, despite the potential ruling power of a
dominant group or ideology (Archer, 1988).
Public rituals and places are one of the easiest ways of including different
groups within a wider social order and ideological movement, to recognize
other positions and ideas, to register ambivalence about belonging and
difference, to shape and alter intergroup cooperation, and to deal with risk
and uncertainty in moments of social doubt (Natter and Jones, 1997). In this
sense, ritual is not just normative but transformative, insofar as it provides
the means for responding to perceived tensions between local groups, institutions and historical conditions and for changing ideologies. It also is
important to recognize the special places where rituals are practiced and the
way they are structured materially and temporally (DeMarrais et al., 1996)
to develop cooperation and compliance between different groups and
between different plans and ideologies. Special spatial structures and places
of collective action provide historically contingent but durable schemes of
compliance or dissent that have an ideological dimension (Therborn, 1980).
This dimension . . . derives from routines of compliance. It establishes an
authority structure and institutionalizes practices of rule. Ideologies present
the code of social order how social and political organizations are structured (Earle, 1997: 8). Ideological codes must connect public beliefs to
actions and to special places. These places, in turn, contribute to the creation
and reproduction of ideology (Hirsch and OHanlon, 1995; Lefebvre, 1991).
Thus, special places are not only produced by but also produce ideology,
and they may reproduce specific forms of social positioning and cohesion
in time and space (Earle, 1997: 1538).
In the case of Peru, special places such as the U-shaped ceremonial
structures of the Late Initial period were not just produced by and reflected
ideology. These places also played an important role in the creation and
negotiation of ideological beliefs and ritual practices and in the regulation
of resources and people. The patterned layout in the size and shape of the
ceremonial space of local U-shaped forms was an expression of the
negotiated social and religious order. By tracing the historical conditions

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that relate local form to the pan-Central Andean religious ideology and
social order, we can examine early social integration in the Zana Valley,
and how autonomous household relationships were restructured and
remapped in the socially constructed space of the U-shaped buildings at
San Luis. Specifically, analysis of the construction and use phases of these
buildings provides detailed information on the tempo of social cohesion and
the rhythm of the ritual calendar that allowed local household communities the time to adjust to integration and to set their own pace of change
(Bourdieu, 1990, 1994; Thrift, 1988).
Bourdieu (1994) has addressed the importance of understanding the
pace of a community. That is, members of a community must perform their
duties by conforming to an accepted social order. This entails adhering to
the collective rhythm or calendar that helps to establish and maintain
community solidarity. Certain rhythms are appropriate for certain actions
including, for my purpose, inter-household ceremonial activities that follow
an annual cycle or tempo. For Bourdieu, adherence or submission to the
collective rhythm is important, because the temporal and spatial organization of specific collective actions structures the communitys representation
of ideology and, in turn, structures the community itself in the form of a
social or ritual calendar (Bourdieu, 1994: 1589; see also Young and
Schuller, 1988; Zerubavel, 1981).
Little is known of the social rhythm or tempo of use of early ceremonial
sites, and how public architecture, building phases, and periodic ceremony
may have been used to integrate autonomous groups or employed for nonintegrative purposes (Dillehay, 1998; Walker and Lucero, 2000). In the
Central Andes, the U-shaped centers of the Late Preceramic and Late
Initial periods were special places where the social calendars of inter-household activities and new ideologies were periodically played out and where
goals may have been informed by a habitus, a call for action that oriented
members of previously autonomous households toward particular practices
as opposed to others, such as sustained autonomy, social integration, or
even political centralization.
The general thinking about the periodicity of building phases in early
Andean monuments is that they represent relatively static, conservative,
construction units reflecting refurbishment events, reciprocal labor
exchanges, population expansion, changes in leadership or ritual cycles of
dedication, termination and renewal ceremonies (Burger, 1992; Moore,
1996). Andeanists have not specifically problematized these phases as an
object of social study by asking what the tempo of cultural deposition (i.e.
stratigraphy) at these sites implies ideologically or politically. I suggest that
they not only reflect ritual cycles and related activities, but, at some sites,
the formation of deliberate timespace extensions (e.g. temporal pauses
or breaks) in the public social calendar that are designed to slow integration or to more cautiously approach it, respectively, by engaging in

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intercommunity ceremony and to establish an agenda and values to guide

this new experience and collective identity in times of risk and uncertainty.4

STRATIGRAPHY OF TEMPORAL AND SPATIAL RHY THMS

The idea of a social tempo or rhythm in the use of public buildings has
received limited attention from Andean archeologists. Yet, it is the stratigraphy of a place that perhaps best represents the empirical record of site
use, its temporal construction phases, its cycles of occupation and abandonment, and its time-space compressions and extensions. As such, the study
of stratigraphy, use phases, and the patterned layout of buildings provide
insights into the social order and social processes that were at work (Walker
and Lucero, 2000).
In this study, site use refers to a single continuous brief interval of time,
a week, month, season or year perhaps, as suggested by the thickness and
horizontal extent of habitation floors and by the debris recovered from
them. The tempo of site use is different. It refers to the frequency and
syncopation (Dillehay, 1998; Wandsnider, 1992) of occupation in a specific
locale, whether it is a site on the landscape or a particular place or time of
use in a building. Continuous stratigraphy indicates uninterrupted occupation or temporalities by the same or different communities. Discontinuous stratigraphy represents lapsing temporalities or cycles of site use and
abandonment (whether related to cultural or natural events). A site is thus
shaped by these rhythms of different occupation and abandonment temporalities. By studying the stratigraphic record of sites, we can address the
relationship between temporally and spatially discrete episodes of site use
and disuse to study changes in the organization of behavior in spatially
bounded site areas, such as U-shaped structures.
Essential to this approach is detailed methodological emphasis on site
stratigraphy, especially the microstrata of cycles of discrete use floors and
culturally sterile abandonment layers. The microstrata of U-shaped structures generally has not been recorded by archeologists working in Peru;
when they have been identified, it has been post facto, and usually recorded
as architectural (re)building episodes revealed by walls and room additions
(or macrostrata) rather than as intermittent episodes of use and/or
abandonment that may be interpreted as temporal and spatial compressions/extensions designed to speed up, delay and manipulate, respectively,
certain social and economic processes. In this study, both microstrata and
macrostrata constitute important units of analysis, which inform us of
specific cultural and social events and, most importantly, provide a proxy
record of their sequential, synchronic and coalescent histories at San Luis
and its associated households.

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INTEGRATION, PLACES, AND TEMPORALITIES AT SAN

LUIS
To study emergent social integration and delay or deterrence of political
unity in the middle Zana Valley, an integrated research strategy was implemented at San Luis (Dillehay, 1998; Dillehay et al., 1997; Dillehay and
Netherly, 1981; Netherly and Dillehay, 1979) and its two, side-by-side, Ushaped ceremonial complexes (Figures 12). Research at the site focused
on: (1) excavating comparable areas of the two complexes; (2) defining the
intra-complex organization and inter-complex relations of the structures;
(3) documenting the technology, economy, and internal organization of the
structures; (4) studying the cycles of use and abandonment by examining
the macro-strata and micro-strata of San Luis; and (5) identifying outlying
support settlements characterized by small agrarian households.
The Zana Valley is situated at the lowest point of the Andean chain in
Peru, and contains the countrys closest juxtaposition of coast, sierra, and
tropical forest (Koepcke and Koepcke, 1958; Simpson, 1975). The valley is
characterized by a series of branching, lateral canyons which contain access
routes to the tropical forest above and to the arid middle valley, where the
San Luis site is located, and the coastal desert plain below (Dillehay and
Netherly, 1981).

Figure 2

Schematic view of the two U-shaped structures at San Luis

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Figure 3 Schematic drawing of the two building phases (1 and 2 on the left
side of the figure) of mound A, prepared use floors (1E, 2B, 2D, 2F, 2G, 2K, 2M,
2O, 2Q, 2S, 2U, and 2W), and culturally placed but sterile fill layers between
them in the stratigraphy of a one of several excavated trenches in complexes
A and B. Note that some floors are discontinuous and occupy discrete areas of
the platform mounds.This stratigraphy is typical of the entire site complex

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The two U-shaped structures at San Luis face to the east. The northern
structure is complex A; the southern structure is complex B (Figure 2). The
structures are 4 m and 3 m high, 80 and 89 m long, and 120 and 250 m wide,
respectively. Both are constructed of rough fieldstones and occasionally
smooth blocky stones, and have a central structure with a platform and two
parallel wings. The pair of U-shaped mounds is unique in the valley,
although later paired mounds exist elsewhere (Netherly and Dillehay,
1986).
In total, 625 m2 were excavated in on-mound and off-mound areas at
San Luis. An additional 105 m2 of looters pits were cleaned and profiled.
In total, 2932 sherds, stone tools, copper pieces, spondylus shells, rock
crystals, bone remains, articulated llama skeletons and several miscellaneous items were recovered from survey and excavation. Extensive survey
conducted in the valley resulted in the location of 15 small domestic sites
of the Late Initial Period. These sites range in size between 3050 m and
6090 m, and are defined by ceramics, grinding stones, cultigens (e.g. corn,
beans, peppers, peanuts, cotton), faunal remains (e.g. deer, iguana, shellfish), occasional small stone residential structures, and other debris. These
localities show indistinguishable ceramic affinity with San Luis; two of these
sites have AMS radiocarbon dates (129060 BC [Beta 161914] and
131050 BC [Beta 161913]) that agree with those from San Luis.

Macro-strata and micro-srata: occupation and abandonment

episodes
Two long trenches were excavated, several large blocks, and profiled
numerous looter pits in both complexes and in off-mound areas. The excavations have revealed two major construction phases in the two complexes
(Figure 3). Both complexes consisted of occasional small rooms, building
walls and several distinct, intermittent and thin (540 mm) prepared floors
and culturally sterile abandonment layers constructed in specific but limited
areas across the platform of the atria and on the wings, and at different
levels within the structures (Figure 4). None of the floors and any associated walls extended continuously across any platform level on the main
pyramids and on the two wings in the complexes. Each floor was prepared
in a discrete area and subsequently capped by the culturally sterile lenses
of clay silt.
The structures revealed more discrete construction phases than
expected, forming small architectural units, levels, and activity areas, with
prepared platform floors often tapering off into a prior use area, thus
leaving the impression that the time passed between each episode was
rather short in duration. Most construction on the atrium of each mound
was composed of small ritual platforms and stone-lined hearths of different
levels. More than 20 prepared floors occupied the corners of the platforms,

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Figure 4 Schematic view from above of discrete ash lenses, prepared floors,
and remnants of wall construction associated with the last use episode of
building phase 2 in complex A
with many superimposed upon others. Some abandoned structures were
partially destroyed or modified by the subsequent construction. Others
were intentionally buried by the placement of culturally sterile sediment.
Most ritual activity was associated with burned areas and intentionally
broken pottery vessels. We interpreted these discrete vertical and horizontal constructions and floors as different and brief ritual episodes that
represent individual household spaces. (Each discrete floor averages c. 13
m2 in size.) Similar stratigraphic patterns have been found at other Late
Initial Period sites (Terada and Onuki, 1981; Walter Alva, pers. comm.,
1997), which may represent similar or dissimilar activities.
Ceramics recovered from the two complexes and from the 15 support
sites indicate a Late Initial Period occupation ranging between approximately 1400 and 1100 BC. Two AMS radiocarbon dates obtained from
charcoal in sealed hearths excavated in the base of the atria of the
complexes were processed at 129040 BC (Beta 161944) for complex A and
at 128060 BC (Beta 34558) for complex B. Based on the close agreement
of these dates, on the similarity of and overlap between ceramic styles
between the two complexes, and on the appearance of discrete, thin, intermittent use floors in all excavated areas, it appears that the entire site
represents a series of temporally close building, use and abandonment
episodes. The ceramic types and radiocarbon dates from these sites agree
completely with similar types and date at Huacaloma Period sites (Terada

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and Onuki, 1981) in the nearby Cajamarca highlands and at the Montegrande sites in the neighboring middle Jequetepeque Valley (Tellenbach,
1986). Collectively, the ceramic, household settlement, and other artifact
evidence suggest that the individual ritual spaces defined for each phase of
construction in the buildings correspond to the individual households
located near San Luis (Figure 1).

Artifact patterns at San Luis

Other cultural debris recovered from San Luis included grinding stones,
rock crystals, lithics, marine shell, copper, faunal and floral remains, and
other materials. The majority of the grinding stones were recovered from
the north wings and from adjacent off-wing areas. Pieces of copper, marine
shell and most lithics were retrieved from the surface of the south wings
and from adjacent off-wing areas. Most rock crystals were recovered from
the steps of entrances leading into the central plazas, onto the mounds, and
into segments of the wings in both complexes.
The most revealing aspect of the work at San Luis was the excavation
of more than 580 features in the two wings and in the central mounds of
both complexes (Dillehay, 1998). The features were small burned depressions containing plant material (i.e. burned cactus, grasses, reeds,
Chenopodium sp. and unidentified seeds [Rossen, 1996]), often associated
with small stream pebbles, and camelid and human footprints. Several
amorphous shaped prints appear to be the sandaled feet of humans. Most
features represent C-shaped basins that were formed by a long, curved,
burned segment and a short, curved, unburned segment. The features
cluster in groups and occasionally in rows of 10 to 20 on the wings (Figure
5). Similar but less defined and richer features existed on the staircase and
the atria of the mounds. No features were found in the central plazas and
in off-mound areas. Analysis of the circumference of the C-shaped, burned
features shows a close correlation with the circumference of broken bottle
rims (34 cm) and neckless jars (1012 cm) recovered from the same areas,
suggesting that vessels might have been employed as containers to hold
burning materials during ritual. Inspection of the ceramics recovered from
the wings and the mounds shows that the rims and interiors of some sherds
have been burned. The absence of burn bases also suggests this pattern.
The excavated burned features add a new dimension to our understanding of the type and structure of ritual activity performed at this type
of U-shaped structure. These features appear to be products of individual
ritual episodes offering burning plants and smoking pots to the mound and
its ideational referents. The rarity of burned features and the presence of
large rock crystals on stairways in the plaza and in the central entrance to
the patios suggest different offerings and activities, all probably associated
with spatially and temporally ordered ritual stages, with food and gift

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Figure 5 Drawing of C-shaped burned areas, hoofprints, and other feature

stains on use floor of south wing of complex A. Note the linear-like layout and
clustering of some features
exchange across the site, and with the building of the structures themselves.
In summary, the archeological evidence says something about the basis
of divisions, transformations, and changes within the local society; that
people made internal fissioning or divisions and that the two complexes
were simply sequential building, use and abandonment phases by the same
local society. The critical evidence for social, ritual and exchange activities
comes from the U-shaped form of the complexes and from specific and
comparable architectural features and the duplicity of activities in both
complexes. The presence of discrete deposits of artifacts and features in the
U-shaped structures seems to reflect individual ritual episodes of local
households (Dillehay, 1998).

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Outlying support sites and distant ceremonial places

As mentioned previously, survey in the middle Zana Valley has revealed
the presence of 15 domestic sites dating to the Late Initial Period. These
sites are generally small (0.10.6 hectares), exhibit the same local and
occasional Huacaloma and Montegrande ceramic types recovered from San
Luis, and are concentrated within a 7 km radius around the site (Figure 1).
These sites probably represent the households that built and periodically
participated in ceremony at San Luis. There is no evidence to indicate that
these sites or others in the valley were integrated prior to the construction
of San Luis, or that any of the domestic sites reveal social differentiation.
Other Late Initial Period sites in the region are located on the coast
about 30 km down valley at Purulen, which is associated with coastal Cupisnique ceramic styles (Alva, 1988), and about 40 km south at Montegrande
in the middle Jequetepeque Valley, which is affiliated with, if not directly
occupied by, highland communities from the Cajamarca highlands (Burger,
1992; Tellenbach, 1986). Located between 40 to 80 km away in the upper
Lambayeque, Zana and Jequetepeque valleys are several large non-Ushaped, multi-tiered platform mound complexes that date to the Middle to
Late Initial Period and the Early Horizon (c. 1500500 BC), and show clear
ceramic and architectural affinities with Cajamarca cultures (Dillehay and
Netherly, 1981; Elera, 1992; Kato, 1993; Matsumoto, 1992; Ravines, 1985).
Although the chronology and specific relations between these sites are not
well defined, it is likely that some were built before and occupied during
the construction of San Luis and thus may have been the major ceremonial
places that provided the ideological impetus for social integration and any
attempt toward political centralization in the Zana Valley.

LOCAL STRATEGIES OF SOCIAL INTEGRATION: RITUAL

PAUSES AND SEGREGATED SPACES
Several questions can be asked at this point. How do we explain the stratigraphy of intermittent use and abandonment of San Luis? How does the
architecture at San Luis condition households for collective activity? I
believe that the purpose of public ceremony at San Luis was to periodically
build portions of the two U-shaped structures as part of spatializing and
materializing new ideological experiences (DeMarrais et al., 1996; Thomas,
1995) given to the social integration of autonomous households. The Ushaped buildings bounded and structured collective ritual activity and its
associated meanings by spatially juxtaposing individual household spaces
across the site and thus encouraging local groups to make new arrangements in the context of a scalar shift to collective behavior (Dillehay, 1998).

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How were these beliefs and experiences shaped at San Luis, and moved
from one area to another on the wings and on the atria of the two structures? The sequential building phases in the two complexes, the discrete
use spaces on the atria, and the intermittent or discontinuous stratigraphy
suggest deliberate pauses and segregated spaces in collective ritual that not
only spatially defined and extended community social relations beyond the
household level to the San Luis site but also sequenced or extended these
relations over a prolonged social calendar. The association of individual
ritual episodes most likely with different households, each with assigned
different spaces and elevations on the atria, suggests the rotation and separation of individual household actions within the broader community order
and collective physical space. The discrete horizontal and vertical episodes
reflected in activity at the site were seemingly not part of a single coherent,
centralized ceremonial system administered by a permanent ruler or group
of elites.
What was the integrative and political effect and possible social meaning
of the temporal pause and employment of segmented spaces in collective
ritual at San Luis? The macro-stratigraphy of the site represents two major
building or refurbishment episodes in each complex. But I suggest that the
microstrata of discrete and intermittent floors and capping events carry
social meaning related to deliberate pauses in ritual action. The value of
pauses in collective ritual was reinscription and negotiation of new social
meanings. The repetition of the ritual, the activity of the break, was not so
much arbitrary as interruptive and redeeming, a time-lag, or time-space
extension, that was not a conclusion but a liminal interrogation and reordering of interhousehold relations. I suggest that these breaks opened up and
extended the negotiatory space between local households (and between
any participating outside communities) rather than imposing a strict
continuous hierarchical order. By slowing or extending the integration
process and deterring centralization, local households may have reduced
the risks and uncertainty of integration and the adoption of an integrative
ideology. Risks also would have been taken in shifting to an intensified agricultural economy and in sharing a valley-wide irrigation system with neighbors.
What was the broader integrative social energy circulated at San Luis?
I suggest it was related to power, aspirations, religious awareness, and
collective social rhythm. The physical structuring, restructuring, and
sequential building of San Luis, movement within and among it parts, the
sequencing of events and structures, the reordering and reworking of individual ritual spaces worked to react and recreate sectional and graded fields
of new social knowledge and experience. By emulating the U-shaped form
and its attendant ideology at sites in neighboring valleys, previously independent households in the middle Zana Valley associated themselves with
a powerful and prestigious pan-Central Andean ideology, although they

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sought social integration rather than political centralization. The U-shaped

form of San Luis was a social institution in-the-making that drew upon the
power this institution had already accumulated in other valleys. While in
other valleys, this ideology may have produced varying models of political
centrality and hierarchy, it did not achieve this model in the Zana Valley
for the period in question.
Before leaving this topic, it is necessary to consider whether the stratigraphy of individual ritual episodes in the two U-shaped complexes reflects
patterns other than deliberate pauses or time-space extensions and just
social integration. The quantity and spatial layout of artifacts and features
in these buildings suggest the same redundant individualized rituals
performed at the same scale and intensity differentiated by only vertical
and horizontal location. There is no evidence in the form of burials, special
rooms, elaborate artifacts, and other features to suggest that an individual
ruler controlled these activities. Nor is there archeological evidence in the
form of deep midden deposits in the households to suggests prolonged
occupation, increased population, and increased and permanent population
nucleation to suggest political centralization (Mehrer, 2000).
In sum, I have related the observed patterns at San Luis to an intrusive
Late Initial Period ideology that encouraged social integration and discouraged political centralization within the boundaries of the middle Zana
Valley. The monumentality and the spatial uniformity of the U-shaped
architecture in this valley, and possibly in others, bespeaks the importance
of a shared ideology or at least to foster one in a previously dispersed social
arena. The periodic use of the U-shaped structures at San Luis and the
absence of a permanent residing population provided occasion for collective power at the site. Social integration continued at San Luis until around
12001100 BC, when the two structures were decommissioned, capped with
culturally sterile lenses, and abandoned permanently. Public ceremonial
activity then shifted to the previously mentioned multi-tiered platform
mounds in the upper Zana, Jequetepeque and Lambayeque valleys dated
between 1000 and 500 BC (Dillehay and Netherly, 1981). These sites are
characterized by larger mound complexes, individual burials with offerings,
thicker cultural deposits, and nucleated domestic zones, suggesting that
permanent residence, formal leadership, proto-urban settlement, and
political centralization and regional hierarchies had been achieved in the
area. The ideology associated with these and other complexes scattered
throughout the highlands and coast of Peru eventually was transformed into
another ideological practice. Between 400 and 100 BC in various regions
of Peru, the U-shaped and multi-tiered platform mounds of the Formative
era were abandoned and populations began to aggregate in small towns and
cities. The permanent integration of dispersed households and multiple
communities and a hierarchical society finally dominated in the Central
Andes.

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OPTING FOR INTEGRATION

I have examined public ritualized spatial practices as part of the social structure and as instrumental in building a coherent community at San Luis. This
community was delineated through choices made about new organizational
forms of social interaction and shared practices between local and non-local
communities that probably involved ritualized gift exchanges and
communal labor projects (Marcus, 2000: 234; Monaghan, 1995; Yaeger,
2000) By choosing a public strategy of social integration rather than
political centralization, as I have interpreted the archeological evidence, it
may have eased local concerns about uncertainty and opened the way to
cooperation, trust, and more exchange during moments of emergent
complexity. Small-scale rituals at San Luis connoted completion of
exchanges between households and established a community social matrix,
even though they may have emulated only part of the large-scale intrusive
ideology. Set within this context the boundaries of ritual were not only
neutral to each household but gave a redundant time-space order and
familiarity. I have learned from large-scale, multi-lineage ceremonies of the
present-day Mapuche in Chile that general adherence to uniformity in
ritual material symbolism and in the spatial layout of ceremonial sites is
important in order for local and non-local communities to participate within
a regional network of familiar ritual spaces, although rituals can be interpreted differently by different communities (Dillehay, 1992). Although
ceremony produces bonds of solidarity among communities, it does not
require strict adherence to all forms, symbols and doctrines of panMapuche ideology and, in the past, to political centralization. To the
Mapuche, public ceremony was and is not only an integrating factor but
also an expression of social independence and social divisiveness. At San
Luis and other localities, it also may have been participation in a network
of allied ceremonies sponsored by small-scale communities that may have
been more important than the sharing of all symbols, beliefs, and practices
within the wider Central Andean ideology. I say this because, as mentioned
earlier, not all architectural and stylistic elements of this ideology are
present at San Luis, implying only a partial commitment to its structure and
doctrine.
Participation in rituals at San Luis extended the social spatiality of the
local population beyond their individual households to a local public place,
and to the even larger-scale ideology that featured the U-shaped ceremonial space in other coastal sites. As a result, three complementary levels of
social order existed in the middle valley: the pan-Central Andean ideology
as expressed in the dual U-shaped spaces of San Luis, the collective
community of households at the site, and the private spaces of each household. These levels may have been separate in daily life, but they

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communicated and articulated in public ritual. These differentiated but

interlocking levels and representations of community activity are reminiscent of the different levels of individual and collective actions associated
with varying spaces discussed by Joyce and Hendon (2000) for the Late
Classic period site of Cerro Palenque in Honduras. These recurring practices created spatially restricted special locations that structured and
reflected interactions between different community members operating at
different levels. Actions performed in these places gave historical weight
to these places and produced a common social identity among members. In
a similar fashion, exchange at San Luis within the large-scale ideology
defined the boundaries of the local community beyond the household level
to shape new and wider levels of social identity. Usage of each level fed
back on to the structure of the local and wider ideological identity (sensu
Giddens, 1979). Although we do not know whether this wider identity was
imposed on or emulated by the local Zana population, we can surmise that
households participating in ritual at San Luis identified with aspects of its
organizational structure and its symbols of authority. This identity was a
matter of reinforcing the local option of social integration, whereby locals
negotiated their position within the larger ideology on their own terms or
extricated themselves from it to establish self-autonomy within it. Or locals
may simply have sought their identity within themselves in reaction against
this outside ideology.
It may be that as some communities in Peru were pressured by or simply
came into greater contact with wider social or ideological forces, they
operated at various levels underneath and above the formal institutions
introduced by these forces in order to maintain their autonomy and, at the
same time, to participate in the larger sphere itself. (This also may account
for partial and decadent use of the wider ideologys symbols and spatial
structures, respectively.) By operating at all or different levels of participation, separate communities may have evolved different, perhaps even
competing, plans of social practice, agricultural land holdings and water use
rights, and public ceremonies. I suspect that these wider forces and their
spatial manifestation in U-shaped structures accommodated these differences and a wide range of non-centralized and centralized political forms.
These patterns also suggest that some early agrarian populations of the
Late Initial period may be best characterized by less shared meaning and
more choices about their own social direction, ideology-building, consensual political arrangements, symbol and power sharing, and communalism.
To study these issues more, we need to place more emphasis on communal
approaches (McGuire and Saitta, 1996; Saitta, 1997), to explore how leadership was played out in societies that held communal ownership of resources
and appropriated social labor collectively, how leadership was subsumed
to the commune, and how the use of power was limited by kinship, civil
obligations, and communal social formations (Keene, 1991; Saitta, 1997).

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Recognition of differences in the meanings and beliefs of an integrative

religious ideology and the employment of ritual participation to structure
community identity presents a more complex view of these early societies,
whereby a plurality of ideologies and social orders may have been tolerated via the employment of similar symbols and architectural canons. Also
needed is more study of the content and structure of experiences and ideas
that established the tempo and form of ritual interaction on the community
and regional level.

CONCLUSION
What do the observed patterns at San Luis tell us about emerging social
and political complexity at the outset of Andean civilization? The archeological record of the Zana Valley presented here can be interpreted in
different ways. Some archeologists may see centralization and hierarchy in
the data presented; others may interpret individual agency, heterarchy, or
egalitariansm. I see full-scale political incorporation by outsiders being
denied by locals at San Luis. People never lived permanently at San Luis,
but they were periodically integrated there. The need to integrate probably
stemmed from population nucleation in the middle valley, from the intensification of an agrarian lifeway, and perhaps from the realization that
increased intravalley and intervalley connectivity via an irrigation network
were inevitable. By experiencing ceremonial activity at San Luis and by
spatially structuring and restructuring the site, the U-shaped structures
became vehicles for an active reconstruction of remembrance or corporate
memory that permitted the projection of local social relations into the
future.
I do not see the integrative processes and shared ceramic and architectural styles at San Luis and other U-shaped settlements of this period in
the Central Andes being representative of an incipient state system, but
places that simply wove together circulating ideas, styles, and populations
to form a particular kind of integrated society one poised to achieve more
integration or even centralization in some places. It is likely, however, that
most of these settlements were nothing more than small polities defined by
a particular kind of improvised social integration and occasionally political
centralization, and by different strategies designed to transform, multiply,
and spread their local identity through shared power at special places.
Several further issues can be raised for which we have no current answers
in the archeological record of early complex societies. For instance, what
leadership roles came to play in the regulation of interhousehold activity?
When did households evolve into a formal political community? When this
occurred, were special places like the U-shaped structures abandoned?

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What factors conditioned the negotiated choices made about hierarchical,

heterarchical, or horizontal models of organization? What are the specific
triggering conditions of integration in multiple localities? The fact that
household members of an emerging community may have shared common
customs and interests and resided in the same area does not necessarily
mean that they automatically acted in conformity with the general interest
of the community. As Fortes (1945) has shown, the household members of
local communities may struggle hard to retain their autonomy and power.
As a result, communities may exercise several options to sustain solidarity,
one of which is to increase public ritual (Kertzer, 1988: 17980), which
involves new adjustments and readjustments between households. These
adjustments may bring about the ritualization of emergent leadership
among members, in response to new social conditions. If so, emergent
leadership and later centralization may evolve through a series of structures
and problems, with leadership roles being situational, informal, and
periodic as the problem of building community cohesion becomes more
acute.
In archeology, we often concern ourselves with the origin of things. We
look to that one moment, that one place we can point to as the source of
cultural diffusion, political control, agency, or cultural influence. In place
of a genesis, I see something happening at San Luis that is far less spectacular: a subtle, elusive set of exchanges, a network of trades and tradeoffs, competing representations and negotiations between various local
households and outsiders. Gradually, these complex, periodic borrowings,
lendings, collective exchanges, and mutual enhancements from one
community to another led to social and eventually political integration in
the Zana Valley. In archeology, we need to better understand the construction of these exchanges and the processes of movement across them in
order to better understand the emergence of early complex societies. We
also need to partially move away from notions of chiefdom and state
systems and look to other kinds of societies, and the way they managed
multiple strategies of social space and rhythms of temporalities to define
their identities and achieve their goals. I have sought to give more attention to these strategies within which, and by means of which, previously
autonomous household-based communities circulated in a new social, ritual
landscape and expanded their identities to opt for integration rather than
centralization.

NOTES
1 In this study, I view social integration and political centralization as different
but potentially continuous processes that may grade into each other. I refer to
social integration as cooperation and exchange among roughly egalitarian
households, with decision-making being a community enterprise. Leadership is

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temporary, rotating, and open to all members of the society. Political
centralization means that power and authority permanently inhere in one
person or a group of persons.
2 On the Peruvian coast, the material manifestations of this ideology are
U-shaped ceremonial pyramids and a broadly shared but highly variable
iconographic and ceramic style. In the highlands, the architecture, iconography
and ceramic styles are less uniform but still indicative of a widespread
ideological tradition. There is much literature on the iconography of ritual
architecture and ceramics of the Initial Period which space does not permit me
to discuss.
3 It is difficult to distinguish between an imposed and adopted ideology. The
symbols of authority of this ideology were primarily embodied in neckless jars,
drinking vessels and other ceramic forms, U-shaped architecture, geometric and
anthropomorphic iconography, and religious codes (Burger, 1992: 56127). In
my opinion, the absence of elite burials in the U-shaped complexes, permanent
occupation of San Luis, an elaborate or elite domestic residence, and more
formal iconography on ceramics and in clay sculpture suggests the absence of a
centralized authority and a decadent and flexible interpretation of this ideology.
It is granted that decadence also is manifested in the archeological record of
hinterland sites that were strictly under the centralized control of later political
hierarchies (i.e. Moche, Chimu, Huari, Inca). However, these sites usually
contain elite burial records, elaborate artifacts, and housing or administrative
structures that clearly indicate a local authority that represented the polity.
4 There also may have been occasions when building phases acted in reverse, and
served as time-space compressions to accelerate political integration. This may
have happened at earlier sites such as Caral in the Supe Valley (Shady et al.,
2001) and at several localities in the Casma Valley (Pozorski and Pozorski,
1987a, 1987b) where political centralization and hierarchy likely occurred. The
archeological signatures of time-space extension and compressions and of
hierarchic, heterarchic and horizontal constructs require more attention in the
future.

Acknowledgements
The author thanks the Instituto Nacional de Cultura for granting the permission to
carry out archeological research in the Zana Valley over the past 25 years. He also
thanks Drs Walter Alva and Cristobal Campana for serving as the Peruvian codirectors of the project. Thanks are also extended to Patricia Netherly, who was codirector of the research in the Zana Valley from 1976 to 1990, Jack Rossen, and
numerous students from the Universidad Nacional de Trujillo, the Pontificia
Universidad Catolica del Peru, and the University of Kentucky who worked with
the project. I thank several colleagues who read portions or all of this manuscript,
especially Patricia Netherly, Paul Trawick, and Jack Rossen. Anonymous reviewers
are also thanked for their insightful comments. Gratitude is also extended to the
National Science Foundation for supporting the research at San Luis.

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TOM D. DILLEHAY has carried out three decades of archeological and

ethnoarcheological research in Peru, Chile, other Latin American countries, and parts of the United States. He has published extensively on
topics ranging from the peopling of the Americas to early sedentism and
the dynamics of the Inca empire.
[email: dilleha@uky.edu]