Ak'awillay: Wari State Expansion and Household Change in Cucso, Peru (AD 600-1000).

Abstract

This study documents how ancient state expansion affected local communities and how political changes were experienced by families living outside a state’s heartland. During the Middle Horizon (AD 600-1000) the site of Wari in the central highlands of Peru became a large city that dominated the Ayacucho region. Its distinctive architecture and polychrome pottery started to appear at villages and towns beyond Ayacucho, leading many scholars to believe that the Wari state conquered widely and established tight control over several provinces across Peru. Scholars have studied the Wari capital, its heartland, and large Wari sites outside the heartland, but rarely have they studied smaller, local settlements to see how and if local populations were affected by the expansion of the Wari into their regions. In the Cusco region of the southern highlands of Peru, research has focused on two large Wari installations, Pikillaqta and Huaro. My research takes a complementary “bottom-up” approach and examines the impact of Wari state expansion on the village of Ak’awillay. Ak’awillay was first occupied in the Late Formative and grew to become the largest village (10 ha) of the Xaquixaguana Plain during the Middle Horizon. The pre-Middle Horizon and Middle Horizon contexts that I excavated at Ak’awillay provide a unique opportunity to evaluate change through time and assess Wari impact and local responses to Wari expansion in the region. Results suggest that the presence of Wari colonists in Cusco had a minimal impact on the villagers of Ak’awillay. They only rarely procured Wari vessels and obsidian, and they continued to practice the same kinds of domestic and ritual activities as they had before, using similar pots, tools, and paraphernalia through time. Most of the changes seen at Ak’awillay occurred before the arrival of Wari colonists and included the increasing importance of chicha drinking and the procurement of new pottery and stone materials through regional exchange networks. I conclude that the Wari state did not tightly control the population of the Cusco region and that some communities continued to live as they had. Wari presence in Cusco is best characterized as a colony, not a province.