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188 T he interpretation of Wari as an imperial powerinprehistoricPeru(e.g.,Isbell1991a,1991b; Schreiber 1992, 2001) has come under closer scrutiny in the last few years by scholars who are reassessing data that have been gathered in areas assumed to be under Wari control and who are questioning the applicability of the imperial model that underlay previous explanations of the Middle Horizon. Participants in the symposium from which this volume stems were encouraged to reconsider the Middle Horizon scenario in the regions in which they had worked not as a time of peripheries under central control—or not solely as peripheries under central control—but as a time of regional enclaves, each with its own intricate interweaving of history, custom, social relations, and landscape. From this perspective, Wari would be a factor, but not the only factor, affecting social dynamics in each area during the Middle Horizon. For several decades Huari has been conceptualized as a core site that exerted political, administrative, economic, and ideological control over an extensive territory in highland and coastal regions of the central Andes. The territory in which Wari influence could be documented was interpreted as a periphery under direct administrative control from an urbanized center (e.g., Schreiber 1992:Chapter 8). With the core-periphery model structuring interpretation, the impact of Wari wasdescribedbyanalogytotheIncaEmpireandtoother imperial systems known from history, ethnohistory, and archaeology (e.g., Schreiber 2001). It was assumed that the center exercised a high level of control and that provinces were dependent on the center for economic, ideological, and political direction. The actual data from Wari “peripheries” were of uneven quantity and quality, but the puzzling irregularities in that data were given analytical short shrift. The implicit assumption was that once peripheral areas were better known, there would be a good fit with the imperial model of strong central control. The means by which Wari imperial power was expanded and maintained was not well explained. Many scholars drew parallels to the much better documented Inca Empire, arguing that Wari expansion could be attributed to a combination of military threat and action, economic power, and building of alliances between people living in the powerful center and groups in the peripheries who, weighing their political options, chose alliance rather than confrontation. Control was maintained through imposed administrative centers in theprovincesthathadbeenbroughtintotheempire.The identification of Wari administrative centers had proceeded apace through the 1970s and 1980s with general acceptance of the identification of centers close to Huari, Chapter 11 o Contextualizing the Wari-Huamachuco Relationship Theresa Lange Topic and John R. Topic CONTE X TUA LIZING THE WA R I-HUA M ACHUCO R ELATIONSHIP 189 butmoreuncertaintyaboutpresumedcentersatagreater distance from Huari (e.g., Isbell and McEwan 1991). Awareness that the core-periphery model “distorts the reality of the regional interaction system that was spawned by the expansionary dynamics of the Wari state” (Jennings 2006:365) requires that we recognize the social and political complexity inherent in an expansionist endeavor in which a center with imperial ambition encounters a landscape peopled with a diversity of societies, traditions, and attitudes. This kind of variability is a challenge to historians who have the advantage of written records on which to draw, and it presents even greater obstacles to archaeologists who must base their interpretations on a narrower, and potentially more ambiguous, range of evidence. In the past the presence of Wari ceramics or Warirelated architectural patterns in a region was read as straightforward evidence of imperial control from the core. But archaeologists now accept the likelihood of considerable diversity in the relations between the Wari core and the various regions in which its influence is discerned. Complex and shifting relationships based on politics, economics, trade, access to the sacred, and alliances forged between individuals and kin groups can be expected. Evidence for Wari interaction must be considered within the local and regional context in which it occurred if we are to accurately reconstruct the type of interaction that was occurring, the identities of the actors involved, and the motivations for their actions. And distance has a significant effect on regional variance in Wari presence; the social processes underlying Wari impact in the Cuzco area are not likely to be replicated in Cajamarca or in the Jequetepeque Valley. Background The Huamachuco area in the northern sierra of Peru is known for its abundance of large sites, many with remains of impressive monumental architecture. The region is often cited in the standard interpretations of Wari territorial expansion in the Middle Horizon, primarily because...

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