7 The Mutable Neighborhoods of the Late Moche Period in the Jequetepeque Valley, Peru

An investigation of Late Moche hamlets, hillside ceremonial sites, and large monumental centers in the Jequetepeque Valley (650–850 CE) reveals that neighborhood-like groupings were tied to rural and kin-based communities. However, the diversity of settlement types and the non-fixed nature of Jequetepeque “neighborhoods” reveal that North Coast political landscapes defy reduction to an Asiatic mode of urbanism or related village-state models. Instead, the distinctive neighborhood configurations are best explained in terms of historically specific religious and political ideologies. In contrast to the permanently occupied cities of Huacas de Moche and Pampa Grande, traditional neighborhoods, understood as spatially bounded social units, poorly describe the densely populated but pulsating political landscape of the Jequetepeque region. Nevertheless, the archaeological evidence indicates that intra-settlement sociopolitical associations, transcending familial or household allegiances, were consciously maintained and materialized in specific settlements, even when occupation was ephemeral and seasonal. The construction of such (imagined) communities, both within and between different settlements of the Jequetepeque Valley, was determined in large part by rituals of commensality and the sharing of food with tutelary huacas.