Eating Empire in the Jequetepeque: A Local View of Chimú Expansion on the North Coast of Peru

Abstract

As the Chimú empire (ca. A.D. 900-1470) expanded along the north coast of Peru, it employed a mix of direct and indirect strategies to administer conquered populations. In order to investigate the extent to which Chimú conquest reshaped daily life in the provinces, I explore evidence from Pedregal, a rural farming village in the Jequetepeque Valley. I use cuisine as a window onto daily life at Pedregal, in order to construct a “view from the kitchen” of Chimú expansion. Excavation data from Pedregal households indicate that production of agricultural staples such as corn and cotton intensified during the Chimú period, but that while the focus of household culinary practice shifted, the overall range of household activities remained the same. The Chimú seem to have been able to establish political control and intensify agricultural production in conquered provinces without a radical reorganization of rural domestic economies. These findings have implications not only for emerging models of Chimú imperial expansion, but also for our understanding of how household-level change and continuity are articulated with regional political and economic processes.