This dissertation examines Moche (A.D. 300-900) sociopolitical organization in northern Peru at the previously unexplored site of Licapa II, a mid-sized ceremonial center in the Chicama Valley. Moche’s distinct archaeological signatures, chiefly, ceramics and architecture, have long been seen as emblematic of an ethnic and political reality and defined as evidence for the first South American state although recent scholarship has begun to view Moche as a more complex mosaic of interacting settlements across a landscape. My research at Licapa II is the first study of a site of its size and kind, thus constituting a novel contribution to the paradigm shift in Moche research. My excavations, surface collections, and geophysical surveys contributed to understanding the nature of the site and the activities performed there. Licapa II consists of two pyramids (huacas), a canal, and other buildings. I show that the two major structures, Huaca A and Huaca B, are characterized by different material culture, are different in form, and date to different time periods. Huaca A has local ceramics and was mainly used before A.D. 600. Huaca B has Moche IV and V style ceramics and was in use after A.D. 600. Based on my evaluation of radiocarbon dates, the changes in buildings and ceramics seen at Licapa II around A.D. 600 also occurred throughout the Moche world and included the adoption of Moche IV ceramics and soon after, in some places, Moche V. I also show that the Moche V style likely originated in the northern Chicama Valley and spread from there circa A.D. 650. I also argue that political organization in Moche times may have been similar to colonial era organization, based on nested moieties organized around the irrigation system. Overall, in this dissertation I demonstrate that Licapa II was an independent center intimately connected to a dynamic landscape of interconnected nodes in an ever- changing and complex network of sites. Simplistic models based on the concept of large Moche states thus should be discarded. / Anthropology

The major focus of this dissertation is the ancestor worship that is inferred to have been practiced in the multiethnic Middle Sicán theocratic state (AD 950-1100) that prospered on the northern North Coast of Peru. The major objective is twofold: (1) demonstrating by archaeological means that ancestors were indeed worshipped in the Middle Sicán society and (2) elucidating the nature and role of the inferred ancestor cult and associated rituals and ceremonies. Ancestor (and the veneration of it) is one of the themes that have the deepest roots in the anthropological thoughts; nevertheless, many archaeologists have uncritically invoked ancestor veneration without sufficient theoretical underpinning and empirical support, to the point that James Whitley (2002) decried "too many ancestors." This dissertation thus begins with a review of the earlier anthropological discoveries and theoretical debates on what ancestor is and who becomes an ancestor, including the cases in the Andes. Based on this review of previous studies, it is hypothesized that the select members of deceased Middle Sicán elites were transformed into an ancestor through a series of prescribed processes. This hypothesis is examined in terms of the five possible material correlates of the inferred Sicán ancestors extracted from the regional archaeological database of the study area accumulated by the Sicán Archaeological Project (SAP) for the last three decades. The role of the inferred Middle Sicán ancestor cult is approached from the ideological perspective. It is inferred that the ancestor cult was employed by the ruling group as an ideological and political means to justify the existence and extension of social hierarchies and inequalities and thus targeted at wider populations different in genealogical origins as opposed to family or lineage members. This study focuses attention on the food preparations and consumptions documented by a test excavation at the principle plaza of the Sicán capital, "Great Plaza," adjacent to the inferred ancestral tombs and hypothesizes that the commensality among the living and the dead during feasts there served not only to commemorate the inferred ancestors, but also to bring together people in different social tiers and to consolidate the highly stratified, multiethnic Middle Sicán society. Two excavations at the ceremonial core of the Middle Sicán state capital, one at the Huaca Loro West Cemetery in 2006 and the other at the Great Plaza in 2008, provide varied lines of evidence that support the above two hypotheses. The results suggest that ancestor worship was indeed practiced during the Middle Sicán Period. By maintaining and monopolizing the ritual access to the Sicán Deity through their ancestors, the Sicán elites reproduced their religious and political power and retained the legitimacy of their social status. Concurrently, the Sicán elites consciously employed their ancestor cult for social integration. After the Middle Sicán Period, these ancestors seem to have retained their spiritual viability even after the later Chimú Empire took the control of this region. If not recognized as the Sicán anymore, they were remembered and honored by the living for over four centuries. On the basis of the merits of traditional approach (e.g., the study of architecture, iconography, bioarchaeology, and ethnohistory and ethnography in the Andes), this study gives primacy to the direct focus on the material residues and relational contexts and patterns of ritual activities and studies their change and stability through time in relation to other historical contingencies. The merit of focusing on the trajectories of ritual activities themselves in a long and wide perspective is that it sheds light on the regional peculiarities and contingent nature of the inferred ancestor veneration, which may be overlooked in cross-cultural, ethnological arguments about the nature, role, and capacity of ancestors. It also provides a wealth of information not only to determine what types of activities took place, but also to explore the intangible symbolic significance behind those activities. As a result, this approach provides a practical solution to the justified criticism by Whitley (2002) and demonstrates how we should approach ancestor veneration and what evidence we would need in order to appropriately define it in archaeological record.

A região do Deserto de Atacama, norte do Chile, possui condições propícias para a conservação arqueológica. Uma grande quantidade de esqueletos ali bem preservados vem permitindo um intercâmbio rico entre estudos bioantropológicos e arqueológicos. Dentro desse contexto, o presente estudo concentra-se nos esqueletos humanos subadultos de San Pedro de Atacama. O universo amostral é de 90 esqueletos subadultos (menores de vinte anos) de três cemitérios diferentes: Solcor-3, Coyo-3 e Quitor-6; a datação desses cemitérios varia de 250 até 1240 A.D. A inferencia da qualidade de vida biológica foi feita através de oito marcadores osteólogicos. Duas abordagens foram realizadas neste estudo: a comparação do estilo e da qualidade de vida biológica entre períodos da pré-história atacamenha e a análise mundial. A primeira delas comparou quatro períodos distintos da pré-história atacamenha: anterior à influência do Império Tiwanaku, auge da influência Tiwanaku, fase final da influência Tiwanaku e posterior à influência Tiwanaku. A hipótese central a ser testada nesta abordagem é a de que houve uma melhoria significativa na qualidade de vida biológica na região de San Pedro de Atacama durante o auge da influência Tiwanaku. A segunda abordagem consistiu na junção dos quatro períodos em uma amostra única. Estes dados caracterizaram a qualidade de vida biológica dos subadultos atacamenhos, e foram comparados com populações do restante do mundo. Objetivou-se testar se a qualidade de vida biológica em San Pedro enquadrava-se na estratégia de subsistência agricultora. Os resultados da comparação entre os períodos corroboraram a hipótese inicial apenas para o marcador cáries, uma vez que os demais marcadores apresentaram um padrão bastante variado. Os resultados da análise mundial, por sua vez, mostraram que San Pedro de Atacama se encontra dentro da amplitude de variação da categoria \"agricultores\". No entanto, foi constatado que, com exceção de cáries, os marcadores osteológicos apresentaram alta variação nas diferentes populações mundiais de uma mesma estratégia de subsistência. Os marcadores cáries, abcessos e hipoplasias em San Pedro ficaram acima da média agricultora enquanto hiperostose porótica, infecções e traumas ficaram abaixo. Em suma, encontrou-se um padrão complexo, no qual cada marcador osteológico é sensível a um conjunto de condições culturais e naturais próprias da história da população atacamenha / Desert of Atacama region, northern Chile, shows excellent conditions to preserve archaeological remains. A high number of skeletons exumated allows a rich interchange between archaeology and biological anthropology. This study analyzed subadult skeletons from San Pedro de Atacama. The sample is composed by 90 subadult skeletons (less than twenty years) from three burial sites: Solcor-3, Coyo-3 e Quitor-6; they are dated from between 250 to 1240 A.D. Style and biological quality of life were infered throught eight osteological markers. Two approaches were carried out in this study: comparison of style and biological quality of life between Atacameneans prehistoric periods and world-wide groups. The first compared four prehistoric periods of San Pedro: before the influence of Tiwanaku Empire, peak of Tiwanaku influence, final period of Tiwanaku influence and after Tiwanaku influence. The main hypothesis tested in this approach is the significative improvement of biological quality of life in San Pedro de Atacama during the peak of Tiwanaku influence. The second approach joined the skeletons from the four periods in a single sample. These data caracterized the biological quality of life of Atacameneans subadults. The aim was testing if the biological quality of life in San Pedro de Atacama would be within the variation found in agricultural subsistence strategy. The results of the periods\' comparison show that only caries frequencies corroborated the main hypothesis, while the other markers presented a variable pattern. Results of the world-wide analysis showed that San Pedro is within the range of agriculture category. However, it was found out that, except for caries, the osteological markers showed high variation in different world-wide populations within the same subsistence strategy. Caries, abscess and hypoplasias in San Pedro de Atacama were above the world-wide agricultural mean, while porotic hyperostosis, infections and traumas were below. In brief, it was found a complex pattern, in which each osteological marker responds to a particular group of natural and cultural characteristics of the prehistory of Atacamenean population.

abstract: Social identities are fundamental to the way individuals and groups define themselves. Archaeological approaches to social identities in the Andes emphasize the importance of group identities such as ethnicity and community identity, but studies of gender and age identities are still uncommon. In this dissertation, I build on these earlier approaches to Andean social identities and consider community, gender, and age identities at the site of Chiribaya Alta using case studies. The coastal Ilo Chiribaya polity is associated with the Andean Late Intermediate Period in the lower Osmore drainage of southern Peru. Previous analyses indicate that Chiribaya sites in this area formed a señorío, an Andean chiefdom with separate occupational groups of fishers and farmers. The most complex excavated Chiribaya site in this region is Chiribaya Alta. At this time, excavations have sampled nine of the cemeteries present at the site. Two of these cemeteries, four and seven, have the most elaborate burials at the site and are each associated with different occupational communities. This dissertation examines community, gender, and age identities at Chiribaya Alta through the use of three case studies. The first case study argues that the iconographic designs on coca bags interred with the dead signified occupational community identities. Coca bags buried in cemetery four have designs relating to mountains and farming, whereas those from cemetery seven have symbols associated with water. These designs correspond to the occupational community groups associated with each of these cemeteries. The second case study uses grave good presence and absence to examine the nature of gender roles and identity at Chiribaya Alta. Multiple correspondence analysis indicates that normative gender roles are reflected in grave good assemblages, but that gender identity was flexible at the individual level. The final case study presents newly generated age-at-death estimations using transition analysis combined with mortuary analyses to explore the manner in which gender and age intersect for older individuals at Chiribaya Alta. This final paper argues that there is an elderly identity present amongst individuals at Chiribaya Alta and that gender and age intersect to impact the lives of older men and women differently. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2019

abstract: Many models of colonial interaction are build from cases of European colonialism among Native American and African peoples, and, as a result, they are often ill-suited to account for state expansion and decline in non-Western contexts. This dissertation investigates social organization and intraregional interaction in a non-western colonial context to broaden understanding of colonial interaction in diverse sociocultural settings. Drawing on social identity theory, population genetics, and social network analysis, patterns of social organization at the margins of the expansive pre-Hispanic Tiwanaku state (ca. AD 500-1100) are examined. According to the dual diaspora model of Tiwanaku colonial organization in the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru, Chen Chen-style and Omo-style ethnic communities who colonized the valley maintained distinct ethnic identities in part through endogamous marriage practices. Biodistance analysis of cranial shape data is used to evaluate regional gene flow among Tiwanaku-affiliated communities in Moquegua. Overall, results of biodistance analysis are consistent with the dual diaspora model. Omo- and Chen Chen-style communities are distinct in mean cranial shape, and it appears that ethnic identity structured gene flow between ethnic groups. However, there are notable exceptions to the overall pattern, and it appears that marriage practices were structured by multiple factors, including ethnic affiliation, geographic proximity, and smaller scales of social organization, such as corporate kin groups. Social network analysis of cranial shape data is used to implement a multi- and mesoscalar approach to social organization to assess family-based organization at a regional level. Results indicate the study sample constituted a social network comprised of a dense main component and a number of isolated actors. Formal approaches for identifying potential family groups (i.e., subgroup analysis) proved more effective than informal approaches. While there is no clear partition of the network into distinct subgroups that could represent extended kin networks or biological lineages, there is a cluster of closely related individuals at the core of the network who integrate a web of less-closely related actors. Subgroup analysis yielded similar results as agglomerative hierarchical cluster analysis, which suggests there is potential for social network analysis to contribute to bioarchaeological studies of social organization and bioarchaeological research in general. / Dissertation/Thesis / Doctoral Dissertation Anthropology 2016

A região do Deserto de Atacama, norte do Chile, possui condições propícias para a conservação arqueológica. Uma grande quantidade de esqueletos ali bem preservados vem permitindo um intercâmbio rico entre estudos bioantropológicos e arqueológicos. Dentro desse contexto, o presente estudo concentra-se nos esqueletos humanos subadultos de San Pedro de Atacama. O universo amostral é de 90 esqueletos subadultos (menores de vinte anos) de três cemitérios diferentes: Solcor-3, Coyo-3 e Quitor-6; a datação desses cemitérios varia de 250 até 1240 A.D. A inferencia da qualidade de vida biológica foi feita através de oito marcadores osteólogicos. Duas abordagens foram realizadas neste estudo: a comparação do estilo e da qualidade de vida biológica entre períodos da pré-história atacamenha e a análise mundial. A primeira delas comparou quatro períodos distintos da pré-história atacamenha: anterior à influência do Império Tiwanaku, auge da influência Tiwanaku, fase final da influência Tiwanaku e posterior à influência Tiwanaku. A hipótese central a ser testada nesta abordagem é a de que houve uma melhoria significativa na qualidade de vida biológica na região de San Pedro de Atacama durante o auge da influência Tiwanaku. A segunda abordagem consistiu na junção dos quatro períodos em uma amostra única. Estes dados caracterizaram a qualidade de vida biológica dos subadultos atacamenhos, e foram comparados com populações do restante do mundo. Objetivou-se testar se a qualidade de vida biológica em San Pedro enquadrava-se na estratégia de subsistência agricultora. Os resultados da comparação entre os períodos corroboraram a hipótese inicial apenas para o marcador cáries, uma vez que os demais marcadores apresentaram um padrão bastante variado. Os resultados da análise mundial, por sua vez, mostraram que San Pedro de Atacama se encontra dentro da amplitude de variação da categoria \"agricultores\". No entanto, foi constatado que, com exceção de cáries, os marcadores osteológicos apresentaram alta variação nas diferentes populações mundiais de uma mesma estratégia de subsistência. Os marcadores cáries, abcessos e hipoplasias em San Pedro ficaram acima da média agricultora enquanto hiperostose porótica, infecções e traumas ficaram abaixo. Em suma, encontrou-se um padrão complexo, no qual cada marcador osteológico é sensível a um conjunto de condições culturais e naturais próprias da história da população atacamenha / Desert of Atacama region, northern Chile, shows excellent conditions to preserve archaeological remains. A high number of skeletons exumated allows a rich interchange between archaeology and biological anthropology. This study analyzed subadult skeletons from San Pedro de Atacama. The sample is composed by 90 subadult skeletons (less than twenty years) from three burial sites: Solcor-3, Coyo-3 e Quitor-6; they are dated from between 250 to 1240 A.D. Style and biological quality of life were infered throught eight osteological markers. Two approaches were carried out in this study: comparison of style and biological quality of life between Atacameneans prehistoric periods and world-wide groups. The first compared four prehistoric periods of San Pedro: before the influence of Tiwanaku Empire, peak of Tiwanaku influence, final period of Tiwanaku influence and after Tiwanaku influence. The main hypothesis tested in this approach is the significative improvement of biological quality of life in San Pedro de Atacama during the peak of Tiwanaku influence. The second approach joined the skeletons from the four periods in a single sample. These data caracterized the biological quality of life of Atacameneans subadults. The aim was testing if the biological quality of life in San Pedro de Atacama would be within the variation found in agricultural subsistence strategy. The results of the periods\' comparison show that only caries frequencies corroborated the main hypothesis, while the other markers presented a variable pattern. Results of the world-wide analysis showed that San Pedro is within the range of agriculture category. However, it was found out that, except for caries, the osteological markers showed high variation in different world-wide populations within the same subsistence strategy. Caries, abscess and hypoplasias in San Pedro de Atacama were above the world-wide agricultural mean, while porotic hyperostosis, infections and traumas were below. In brief, it was found a complex pattern, in which each osteological marker responds to a particular group of natural and cultural characteristics of the prehistory of Atacamenean population.

Stone plays an inextricable role in the lives of Andean peoples and the monumental stoneworks of pre-Hispanic cultures stand in memorial to the experiences and beliefs of those who created them. Stone is often selected as a medium for symbolic works due to its durability and perceived permanence, but in the Andes, its meaning expands beyond its physical properties. Stone was an extension of the animate landscape that both sheltered and endangered its inhabitants. Stories were attached to stones, whether natural or modified, to embed knowledge of the landscape and of history in the memory of communities. Centuries later, archaeologists utilize modified stones and constructed monuments as a window to understand long past societies. As our own technological abilities expand, we are able to garner even deeper understandings of the way stones were used and the meanings they may have once held. High in the Peruvian Andes, in a small city renown for its natural beauty and ecological adventures, there is a modest museum, where hundreds of once powerful stone ancestors are visited by school groups and tourists, receiving words of wonder in place of the offerings of coca, chicha, and music once granted to them by their human children and grandchildren known today as the Recuay people. These carved figures give clues to their meaning through their crouched mummified positions and their accoutrements of power, warfare, and fertility. But much of their histories have been lost, as looting, religious persecution, and local curation have moved almost all of these ancestors from their resting places, erasing clues about their roles and meaning in the society that made them. Utilizing a Holistic Approach to craft production (Shimada and Craig 2013; Shimada and Merkel 1987; Shimada and Wagner 2007), this research seeks to recontextualize these powerful Recuay ancestors that once populated the Huaraz region of highland Ancash (ca. 100-700 CE) through an investigation of their making. Each choice and action in the process of production reveals important information about broader technological systems, social, political, and economic relationships, and the cosmologies and belief systems of the makers. Incorporating multiple lines of evidence from geochemical and technological analysis, as well and surveys of archaeological sites, interviews with modern stone sculptors, and experimental testing of manufacturing techniques, this research provides a reconstruction of the entire production sequence for Recuay stone ancestors, from the selection, procurement, and dispersal of raw materials to the techniques, tools, and settings employed in manufacturing. This research offers an example of the efficacy of the Holistic Approach to gain sociocultural insights from material records of the process of production through direct evidence of manufacturing and to overcome limitations regarding artifact provenience. Additionally, the robust geochemical analysis outlined here provides a replicable approach to semi-quantitative sourcing studies through non-destructive portable X-Ray Fluorescence spectroscopy, with an analytical approach that is as accessible as equipment operation. As a rare case study in pre-Inkaic stone quarrying and carving, this research showcases the technological and symbolic variability within a centuries long belief system that recognized the animate landscape and treated extracted materials as an extension of those forces. Over the course of this 600 year long carving tradition, Recuay artisans altered the forms and iconographic details of these important sculptures, but the production techniques, surface treatments, and raw materials remained remarkably consistent. Only four geologic sources provided raw materials for 96% of analyzed sculptures in this regional assemblage across three different volcanic stone types, including two long-hypothesized quarries, Pongor and Cerro Walun. Over 97% of sculptures across all volcanic, sedimentary, and plutonic stone types shared a specially crafted surface treatment that differed from other Recuay stoneworks and from stone sculptures of preceding cultures in the region. Investigations at the confirmed quarry site of Cerro Walun reveal contextualized insights about the infrastructure of stone quarrying and carving and its close association with tombs and venerated, animate landscapes. Combined with understandings of communal ancestor veneration and intercommunity socio-political negotiations among the Recuay, we see that these stone figures and the process of creating them played an active role in the expression and maintenance of relationships and knowledge between communities and across generations.

Recent archaeological investigations demonstrate that landscapes of the past are not just passive backdrops to people's practices, but rather play a key role in social, cultural, political, and economic processes. Archaeologists have typically studied landscapes by analysing settlement patterns and architecture, yet newer approaches include the study of production practices such as pottery or stone-tool production. One such approach focuses on the ‘taskscape’, which includes skilled agents, and daily tasks occurring on the landscape. Scholars using this framework consider the rhythms and the embodied experience of people in specific places, and explore both the social relationships and ecological affordances of landscapes. Archaeologists, in particular, have considered the embedded nature of daily tasks performed on the landscape, and the material remains of these tasks. In this project I focus on the taskscapes of the Late Formative Period (200 B.C.- A.D. 500), in the Upper Desaguadero Valley, just south of Lake Titicaca in Bolivia. Little is known of Late Formative landscapes, a period prior to the rise of the Tiwanaku state. I study Upper Desaguadero landscapes to contribute to scholarship exploring the social, political and economic changes of the Late Formative Period, prior to the emergence of the Tiwanaku state. I study ceramics from two recently excavated sites, Khonkho Wankane and Iruhito. My research explores the difference between Khonkho Wankane and Iruhito taskscapes and whether this is evident through ceramics. Potters’ choices during production are based on their taskscapes, which can affect the materials selected for the paste (the mixture of clay and inclusions), to how the vessels were decorated. Pottery was not only made but also used during daily tasks and thus pottery usage can be used to examine taskscapes. I conduct attribute analysis, with particular attention to paste. For a more detailed analysis of paste I employ a Dino-Lite digital USB microscope. The digital USB microscope is portable, affordable and time efficient, allowing for analysis to be conducted in the field. This method is promising for ceramic analysis, as it encourages standardization and inter-site comparisons. Ultimately, this tool provides quick yet detailed insights into past social landscapes. / Thesis / Master of Arts (MA)

In this article the author compares from an archaeological perspective two models used in paleo-linguistic studies. The first is inspired by the discussion on the formation of the Indo-European family and is diffusionist and evolutionary in nature. The second emerges from debates on the history of the Semitic language family in which the emphasis is on mechanisms of interaction: between core and periphery, and, lingua franca with local languages and dialects. The author concludes that it is the second model that might allow us to describe properly the environmental characteristics and particular causes which determined the transformations of the linguistic map of the prehistoric Central Andes. To judge from the impressive stability of cultural boundaries which overlap with hypothetical language frontier, the distribution of pre-Hispanic languages in Colonial times reconstructed by linguists ought to coincide with a map of the proto-languages in the mid-first millennium BC (cal.). New relationships at different levels — and also certain distances — seem to have been established during two periods of instability, after the decline of Chavín, and, after the collapse of Huari and Tiahuanaco. It is likely that both proto-Quechua and proto-Aimara, began to assume the role of general languages for Huari and Tiahuanaco, respectively, starting in the Middle Horizon. The exceptional spread of these languages is likely due to their role as general languages. / En el presente artículo comparo, desde la perspectiva arqueológica, dos modelos utilizados en los estudios paleolingüísticos. Uno está inspirado en la discusión sobre la formación de la familia indoeuropea y tiene carácter difusionista y evolutivo. En el segundo, alimentado por los debates sobre la historia de la familia semita de lenguas, el énfasis radica en los mecanismos de interacción: centro-semiperiferia, lengua franca respecto a lenguas y dialectos locales. Por este medio, llego a la conclusión de que solo el segundo modelo permite describir a plenitud las características del entorno y las causas particulares que condicionaron las transformaciones del mapa de los idiomas en los Andes centrales prehistóricos. La distribución de las lenguas prehispánicas en tiempos coloniales, reconstruida por los lingüistas, debió coincidir, en buen grado, con el mapa de las protolenguas a mediados del primer milenio a.C. (calib.), a juzgar por la impactante estabilidad de las fronteras culturales a las que se sobreponen las hipotéticas fronteras lingüísticas. Nuevas relaciones de parentesco en diferentes ámbitos —y, también, algunas distancias— parecen haberse establecido en dos periodos de inestabilidad: luego del ocaso de Chavín y después del colapso de Huari y de Tiahuanaco. Es probable que tanto el protoquechua como el protoaimara empezaran a tener el papel de lenguas generales para Huari y para Tiahuanaco, respectivamente, a partir del Horizonte Medio. La excepcional difusión de ambos idiomas se puede atribuir a esta función.

The recent excavations of two important areas of the Pachacamac Monumental Sector, the foot of the principal facade of the Old Temple and the area beneath the hall of the main entrance at the Temple of the Sun, have allowed the authors to determine the relative chronology of the first construction at this site during the Early Intermediate Period. The ceramic fragments recovered share similar technological, formal and iconographic characteristics with the Lima Medio ceramics (Lima 4-5 in the Patterson sequence) from Chancay, Chillon and Ancon. This paper concurs with the hypothesis that after the conquest of the lower Rimac and Lurin valleys, there was an emerging regional multi-valley political entity which could relate to a complex chiefdom or an “Andean State.” However, during the Lima occupation of the Pachacamac site there is no evidence of an administrative center with urban residential zones. Instead, Pachacamac seems to have been a low-ranked local ceremonial center compared with the sites of Maranga, Pucllana or Cajamarquilla. / Las excavaciones llevadas a cabo por los autores en dos lugares claves del complejo monumental de Pachacamac, al pie de la fachada sur del Templo Viejo y debajo del vestíbulo de la entrada principal al Templo del Sol, han permitidodeterminar con precisión, la cronología relativa del inicio de obras de construcción, emprendidas durante el Periodo Intermedio Temprano, en el área del famoso santuario, ubicado sobre la margen izquierda del río Lurín, en los suburbios de Lima. El material cerámico asociado a los niveles de ocupación tiene las mismas características tecnológicas, formales e iconográficas que la cerámica Lima Medio (Lima 4-5 según Patterson (2014[1966]) en los valles de Chancay y Chillón, así como en Ancón. Cambios simultáneos, profundos, y de gran escala, se hacen presentes durante las fases Lima Medio en la Costa Central del Perú. Las tecnologías de producción de cerámica, su decoración, las técnicas de construcción, las formas de arquitectura, y los rituales funerarios, originarios de la cuenca de Chillón y de Ancón fueron adoptadas por laspoblaciones de Rímac y Lurín. Estas evidencias hacen reforzar la hipótesis que luego de la conquista de los valles bajos de Rímac y Lurín se está formando una entidad política regional multivalle con características de jefatura compleja y/o del «estado andino». Pachacamac lima no tuvo características de un centro administrativo con zonas urbanas residenciales, sino más bien las de un centro ceremonial local, posiblemente de rango subalterno, a juzgar por la comparación con Maranga, Pucllana y Cajamarquilla.