The Pottery of Chincha, Revisited: Jennifer Larios

The Chincha Valley, Peru is most often cited as one of the few places that greatly benefited from Inca imperial expansion through alliance. The Chincha Valley is also known as being one of the points of study in Dorothy Menzel's seminal analysis on the pottery of the south coast of Peru. While Menzel's research was the first of its kind, very few attempts have been made to conduct an intensive study on the pottery of Chincha in order to obtain insights into the socioeconomic and political organization of the area. Thus, the purpose of this talk is to employ a much larger and diverse pottery sample in order to understand the nature of production, distribution, and exchange of pottery in the Chincha Valley.


Rising Complexity on the Frontier:
Isotopic Evidence of Administration at Iron Age Khirbet Summeily, Israel: Kara Larson

Khirbet Summeily is an Iron Age II site located northwest of Tell el-Hesi in Southern Israel. Excavations have revealed a large, singular structure with an adjoining ritual space dated to the Iron Age IIA (ca. 1000-870 bce). Recent interpretations suggest the site was integrated into a regional economic and political system and functioned as a potential administrative outpost based on the material culture and architecture recovered from the Iron Age IIA layers. This talk presents the carbon, oxygen, and strontium isotopic analyses of intra-tooth samples from ovicaprine and cattle remains to test herd management strategies in connection to administrative provisioning activities. The animal remains are used as proxies to identify political and economic ties through shared foodways and herd management patterns. Results suggest that the animals recovered at Khirbet Summeily were raised in local and non-local locations with differential diet and management patterns. This supports the hypothesis from other cultural material finds that Khirbet Summeily acted as an administrative outpost in the region. This is the first isotopic evidence indicating an administrative outpost in the Greater Hesi region and provides evidence for reforming political complexity during the Iron Age IIA.