Home, hearth, and housekeeping: Alternative methods for detecting migrants in the Wari Empire, Peru

The existence of a Wari Empire in Peru was debated for several decades. Despite shifts in settlement patterns and large-scale landscape transformations, researchers questioned Wari hegemony based on the prevalence and quality of “imperially branded” ceramics. These artifacts were predominantly from tombs and could be attributed to a network of prestige exchange or markers of political affiliation. In recent years, studies of archaeological households have reshaped perspectives on Wari expansion by allowing for different types of migrants: those originating in the core, those moving within regions or moving between provinces. In this paper I advocate for household archaeology, a focus on domestic assemblages, and attention to the tangible features of quotidian activities as the means to move beyond narratives posing the conquerors vs. the conquered and a reliance on diacritical goods, which may be limited to the elite and/or mask the regional origin of people participating in imperial projects. Household archaeology is in a better position to detect culture differences in Wari-affiliated colonial settlements, where locals and migrants from diverse cultural backgrounds interacted with each other, differentially participated in the polity as state agents, formed regionalized traditions, and changed some practices, while retaining others, over the course of several generations.