Craft Production as an Empowering Strategy in an Emerging Empire

Abstract

The activities associated with palaces provide clues to understanding the strategies leaders in prehistoric polities used to accrue power. Controlling craft specialists who make prestige goods is one such tactic. Many models presume preciosities were distributed to build alliances or for exchange; however, some objects may be imbued with sacred power. These singular goods would have a different distribution than prestige goods. The relations of production may also differ; elites, rather than attached specialists, may have produced singular objects as an empowering strategy. I propose that some elites in the Wari Empire (600-1000 ce) made elaborate pottery, some of which were sacred goods essential for the performance of rituals, in order to exclude others from this important source of power. To support this hypothesis, I describe the regional distribution of decorated pottery, the manner of its deposition, and evidence that elites created ceramic vessels in a Wari provincial palace at Cerro Baúl, Peru.

Archaeometric Approaches to Defining Sustainable Governance: Wari Brewing Traditions and the Building of Political Relationships in Ancient Peru

“…The palace and adjacent consumption contexts on the summit of Cerro Baúl near the brewery were also key consumers of the Baúl workshop ceramic wares. Nash [6] identified the probable location of a ceramic workshop in the palace on the summit of the mountain that is the likely locale of production for these specialized ceramic vessels.…”

“…This pattern of governance persisted for four centuries on the southern Wari frontier, and implies the practice, as well as the governmental system it supported, were remarkably sustainable, including during periods of more arid climate. and at its heart was a large-scale brewing facility dedicated to producing a unique Wari brew served in highly decorated drinking vessels made on site [6]. Cerro Baúl provides evidence that Wari colonial governance in Moquegua was maintained in part through a ritual feasting center around chicha production.…”

“…This paper uses the results of ceramic sourcing studies and residue analysis of the ceramics from the chicha brewery at Cerro Baúl to understand how this practice sustained political interactions over the latter half of the first millennium CE. and at its heart was a large-scale brewing facility dedicated to producing a unique Wari brew served in highly decorated drinking vessels made on site [6]. Cerro Baúl provides evidence that Wari colonial governance in Moquegua was maintained in part through a ritual feasting center around chicha production.…”

“…It was thus both a cosmopolitan political center and an embassy to a rival polity. The nature of political interaction on this frontier was a critical example of Wari state practice, and at its heart was a large-scale brewing facility dedicated to producing a unique Wari brew served in highly decorated drinking vessels made on site [6]. Cerro Baúl provides evidence that Wari colonial governance in Moquegua was maintained in part through a ritual feasting center around chicha production.…”

“…Specialized knowledge involved the harvesting of clays to build the ceramic bodies and the acquisition of pigments to create the highly ritualized iconography painted on the vessels. It required the esoteric knowledge of the geometric designs and the graphic and vivid supernatural beings painted on the vessels and the means to execute them [6]. It also required a knowledge of the art of brewing and an understanding of the ethnobotanical materials that were the ingredients in a successful beer [7].…”