Carbon and nitrogen isotopic compositions of wool textiles from the north (Virú, Early Intermediate Period) and central (Chancay, Late Intermediate Period) coasts of Peru were used to reconstruct the diet and habitat of the camelids (llamas and alpacas) from which they were produced in order to better understand the regional political economies. The Chancay textiles were derived from camelids primarily raised on highaltitude C3 grasslands. Similarly, isotopic data from Virú textiles assembled in north-coast styles are consistent with the importation of highland camelid wool. For both Virú and Chancay, imported raw materials were crafted in local styles, serving as an effective means of materializing corporate power. Stylistically foreign (noncoastal) Virú textiles were characterized by carbon isotopic compositions similar to those for camelids recovered from Early Intermediate Period sites in the Virú Valley and suggest that these textiles originated in the yungas (1,000–2,300 m asl) or the low sierra (2,300–3,500 m asl). Accordingly, although highland camelid wool was imported to the coast, a simple model of exchange involving the movement of wool textiles exclusively from the puna or the altiplano to the coast is untenable

Interpolity interaction and regional control were central features of all early state societies, taking the form of trade-embedded in political processes to varying degrees-or interregional conquest strategies meant to expand the polity's control or influence over neighboring territories. Cross-cultural analyses of early statecraft suggest that territorial expansion was an integral part of the process of primary state formation, closely associated with the delegation of authority to subordinate administrators and the construction of core outposts of the state in foreign territories. We report here on a potential case of a core outpost, associated with the early Virú state, at the site of Huaca Prieta in the Chicama Valley, located 75 km north of the Virú state heartland on the north coast of Peru. This site is discussed in the context of other possible Virú outposts in the Moche Valley, Pampa La Cruz, and Huaca Las Estrellas, and as part of a broader reflection on expansionary dynamics and statecraft.archaic states | territorial expansion | core outposts R esearch carried out over the past decades suggests that territorial expansion and consolidation often played a key role in the crystallization of early states (1-18). Drawing from historical case studies from Madagascar, Wright noted that statecraft generally takes place in contexts of conflict and expansionary dynamics in landscapes that often featured closely spaced and competing centers and that this process is usually marked by many successes and failures before enduring states emerge (18). Viewed as a process rather than as an evolutionary breakthrough, research into statecraft has contributed to the anthropological study of early civilization by documenting the varied historically contingent trajectories ancient polities followed as they developed more complex systems of political organization.In his work on the expansionary dynamics of primary state formations, Algaze (1) stressed the important role played by core outposts in early statecraft. Such outposts were founded at crucial nodes along trade routes, near resources concentrations, or amid strategically located native polities in control of existing corridors of communication and trade and functioned as centers attracting information, services, population, and resources from the surrounding regions. Reviewing archaeological evidence from different regions around the world, Algaze found that outposts often represented the culmination of earlier patterns of interregional exchange that had by then intensified and become formalized, that, for their own political ends, local elites were often initially amenable to granting such access to foreign powers, and that transportational constraints "meant that the most efficient way to channel regular exchanges between such contrastive polities was precisely by means of isolated core outposts embedded within distant peripheries" (ref. 1, pp. 319-320).To Algaze, core outposts were therefore important "instruments of expansion" founded on the asymmetrical relatio...

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