Moseley’s (1975) Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization hypothesis challenges, in one of humanity’s few pristine hearths of civilization, the axiom that agriculture is necessary for the rise of complex societies. We revisit that hypothesis by setting new findings from La Yerba II (7571–6674 Cal bp) and III (6485–5893 Cal bp), Río Ica estuary, alongside the wider archaeological record for the end of the Middle Preceramic Period on the Peruvian coast. The La Yerba record evinces increasing population, sedentism, and “Broad Spectrum Revolution” features, including early horticulture of Phaseolus and Canavalia beans. Yet unlike further north, these changes failed to presage the florescence of monumental civilization during the subsequent Late Preceramic Period. Instead, the south coast saw a profound “archaeological silence.” These contrasting trajectories had little to do with any relative differences in marine resources, but rather to restrictions on the terrestrial resources that determined a society’s capacity to intensify exploitation of those marine resources. We explain this apparent miscarriage of the Maritime Foundations of Andean Civilization (MFAC) hypothesis on the south coast of Peru by proposing more explicit links than hitherto, between the detailed technological aspects of marine exploitation using plant fibers to make fishing nets and the emergence of social complexity on the coast of Peru. Rather than because of any significant advantages in quality, it was the potential for increased quantities of production, inherent in the shift from gathered wild Asclepias bast fibers to cultivated cotton, that inadvertently precipitated revolutionary social change. Thereby refined, the MFAC hypothesis duly emerges more persuasive than ever.

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The Andes offers a particularly effective focus for an archaeology of mobility because their extreme topography compresses enormous vertical resource diversity across short horizontal distances. In this article, the authors combine findings from two large-scale archaeological studies of adjacent watersheds—the Nasca-Palpa Project and One River Project—to provide the necessary context in which to explore changing mobilities from the Archaic Period to the Inca Empire, and from the Pacific coast to the high Andes. Analyses of obsidian lithics and stable isotopes in human hair are used to argue that changing patterns of mobility offer a new way of defining the ‘Horizons’ that have long dominated concepts of periodisation here.

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Recientes excavaciones llevadas a cabo al interior de dos estructuras domésticas (E19 y E12) en Viejo Sangayaico B (Huancavelica, Perú) revelan como los habitantes de ambas estructuras poseyeron un estatus de élite asociado a la administración inca del asentamiento durante el Horizonte Tardío. Asimismo, diferencias en la calidad y cantidad de bienes europeos consumidos durante las primeras décadas de la Colonia reflejan dos distintas estrategias políticas asumidas por ambos grupos con el objetivo de mantener su estatus de élite en un contexto de profundos y rápidos cambios. Palabras claves: Andes Centrales, Huancavelica, Horizonte Tardío, periodo Colonial Temprano, grupos domésticos de élite. Recent excavations carried out inside two household structures (E19 and E12) in Viejo Sangayaico B (Huancavelica, Peru) reveal how the inhabitants of both structures possessed an elite status associated with the Inca administration of the settlement during the Late Horizon. Likewise, differences in the quality and quantity of European goods consumed during the early decades of the colonial period reflect two different political strategies assumed by both groups in order to maintain their elite status in a context of deep and rapid changes.