In the late 15th and early 16th centuries CE, the Upper Mantaro Valley in central Peru was the site of massive and rapid political change: communities were colonized first by the Inka, who set a provincial capital there at the site of modern day Jauja, and then mere decades later by the Spanish, who set their own first capital at that same location. This project investigates the impacts of such swift, large-scale change on the daily lives of the region’s inhabitants. Specifically, this work examines two lines of evidence – ceramics and domestic architecture – which were made and used locally, as well as closely linked to daily practice. Thousands of previously excavated ceramic sherds were analyzed along 19 distinct attributes, any of which may reflect conscious stylistic or technological choices, or unconscious results of those choices. These same techniques were then adapted to the study of domestic architecture, allowing detailed, quantifiable comparison of superficially similar structures through attributes. All these data will be compiled in an ArcGIS database so that local impacts of those broad-scale political shifts, as reflected in these artifacts, may be discerned between sites, neighborhoods, and even households.
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