Social Landscape and Ritual Pause

Abstract

In the study of emergent complexity, little attention has been given to the strategies employed by autonomous household-based communities to overcome the social risks and uncertainties of initial integration and how these strategies can be examined archeologically. Such strategies can be designed to slow the integrative process and to provide small-scale communities with the opportunity to negotiate the form of emerging social cohesion. The Late Initial Period of Peru (c. 1500-1000 BC) presents a case study in which households are integrated for the first time at public ceremonies that were influenced or organized by a centralizing external ideology. The archeological evidence at San Luis, a U-shaped mound complex in the Zana Valley, Peru, suggests the use of segmented ritual spaces and rhythmic, time-extended ritual pauses by households to ensure social harmony and to deter or delay movements toward political centralization. The broader implications of these developments are discussed for early complex societies.