Flourishing from A.D. 1 to 700, the Recuay inhabited lands in
northern Peru just below the imposing glaciers of the highest
mountain chain in the tropics. Thriving on an economy of
high-altitude crops and camelid herding, they left behind finely
made artworks and grand palatial buildings with an unprecedented
aesthetic and a high degree of technical sophistication. In this
first in-depth study of these peoples, George Lau situates the
Recuay within the great diversification of cultural styles
associated with the Early Intermediate Period, provides new and
significant evidence to evaluate models of social complexity, and
offers fresh theories about life, settlement, art, and cosmology in
the high Andes. Lau crafts a nuanced social and historical model in
order to evaluate the record of Recuay developments as part of a
wider Andean prehistory. He analyzes the rise and decline of Recuay
groups as well as their special interactions with the Andean
landscape. Their coherence was expressed as shared culture,
community, and corporate identity, but Lau also reveals its
diversity through time and space in order to challenge the
monolithic characterizations of Recuay society pervasive in the
literature today. Many of the innovations in Recuay culture,
revealed for the first time in this landmark volume, left a lasting
impact on Andean history and continue to have relevance today. The
author highlights the ways that material things intervened in
ancient social and political life, rather than being merely passive
reflections of historical change, to show that Recuay public art,
exchange, technological innovations, warfare, and religion offer
key insights into the emergence of social hierarchy and chiefly
leadership and the formation, interaction, and later dissolution of
large discrete polities. By presenting Recuay artifacts as
fundamentally social in the sense of creating and negotiating
relations among persons, places, and things, he recognizes in the
complexities of the past an enduring order and intelligence that
shape the contours of history.
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