Similar community events may have occurred at sites in the middle Moche Valley throughout the history of field cultivation; however, an elevated scale appears to have been reached during the Gallinazo and Early Moche phases. In his discussion of plant and animal remains recovered from the Preceramic site of Cerro Lampay in the Fortaleza Valley in the Norte Chico region of Peru, Vega-Centeno suggests that these remains constitute evidence of ritual feasting. According to VegaCenteno, this type of feasting was community-based and served as a means of reconstituting leadership in the context of a loose political structure. Duncan et al. make a similar argument for the roughly contemporaneous site of Buena Vista in the Chillón Valley of central Peru. Neither Vega-Centeno nor Duncan and colleagues propose food production as an economic foundation for accumulation on the part of leaders, necessary for financing feasting events; rather, they emphasize community events and the ritual significance of food in early complex societies. Certainly, the Gallinazo and Early Moche phases witnessed much greater levels of complex social organization than these Preceramic sites, but the consideration of the effects of community-based ritual events should not be dismissed. If we accept that plant food intensification occurred prior to Moche political consolidation during the Gallinazo and Early Moche phases, this intensification may not have been orchestrated by those aspiring to create political hierarchies; rather, it may have occurred in the contexts of larger social/religious negotiations. The political dimensions of intensified food production that occurred during this period probably were pursued alongside traditionally acceptable parameters , but ultimately reached an exaggerated scale, resulting in unintended consequences for the participants involved . Ultimately, maize likely was incorporated into a longer history of social and religious negotiations involving plant foods in which surplus production aided in the support of craftspeople and the fueling of community events that simultaneously reinforced status differences and community cohesion.

By the Middle Moche phase ,mobile grow rack residents at MV-83 maintained high levels of agricultural production and processing, with standardized counts of maize cupules and total maize mirroring trends witnessed in the preceding Gallinazo/Early Moche phases. Based on the presence of a large number of batanes at MV-83, Gumerman and Briceño suggest that site residents were involved in a high degree of agricultural production and processing, likely to fulfill elite tributary demands of the Southern Moche polity . MV-83 residents appear to have been engaged in intensive agricultural production to feed themselves as well as meet tribute demands, with a greater focus on maize than other field cultigens . MV-83 households may also have engaged in mobilizing masa through the redistribution of chicha, coca, and other consumables. Billman argues that by sponsoring masa, MV-83 residents could have functioned as an intermediate node in the Moche administrative network, providing a connection between the rural populations of the middle Moche valley and paramount elites at the Huacas de Moche. Indeed, Surridge’s lithic analysis indicates a pattern of declining hoe use in elite households by the Middle Moche phase , suggesting a shift in high-status domestic economies to ascribed positions that focused on mobilizing the labor of others, in order to redistribute crafts and foodstuffs such as chicha. However, these levels of intensive maize production and processing were already in place in the earlier phases in the Moche Valley. In this vein, the extraction of agricultural products witnessed during the peak of Moche power can be considered a continuation of patterns to which households had already long become accustomed, which may have represented kin-level rather than state-centered organization. Patterns in maize ubiquity, as well as glume data, suggest some differences in maize use at MV-83 compared to other periods, however. The drop in maize ubiquity at MV-83 may have been the result of more restricted uses of maize, possibly related to partitioning between status groups. Galindo residents engaged in levels of food production, of maize and other cultigens, comparable to those of the Gallinazo and Moche phases. Late Moche phase residents of the Moche Valley also experienced a series of droughts and strong El Niño events . This period has been linked to the decline of Moche centralized political authority, possibly as a result of internal class struggle; changes in elite ideology and conflict with external polities have been proposed for the decline of Moche polities as well.

Swenson argues that feasting was implicated in localized strategies of political empowerment in the Jequetepeque Valley in the Late Moche period, and that these strategies, directed by lower level kin groups, “subverted elite authority and urban-based social control in the region.” It is possible that social groups at Galindo participated in commensal events related to strengthening local community cohesion during this period. The small number of soil samples from Moche phase contexts at Galindo discussed in this dissertation also come from both high status and low status residential contexts , along with two civic/ceremonial contexts. The relationships between activities conducted across these different contexts is difficult to determine from the limited sample size. Regardless, Galindo residents were producing and processing high levels of maize and other cultigens even during the decline of the Moche polity, levels that were comparable to those witnessed during the Gallinazo and Early Moche phases, prior to the Southern Moche polity consolidation. Regardless of how maize and other economic cultigens were used, key changes appear to have occurred in the local domestic and political economies of the middle Moche Valley in advance of the dramatic expansion of the Moche polity in the ca. A.D. 300, during the preceding Gallinazo phase . As Gagnon argues, these economic shifts would have resulted in changing patterns of labor, gender roles, and diet. Bone chemistry studies and oral health indicators suggest that males buried at Cerro Oreja had higher maize intakes, likely a result of participation in public commensal events involving chicha consumption, along with meat and other foods. In contrast, women and children buried at Cerro Oreja had poorer dental health, as a result of greater consumption of carbohydrates relative to meat . Males appear to have had more access to coca than females as well, evidenced by oral health indicators and phytoliths recovered from dental calculus 21. The maize data presented here challenge assumptions about the link between agricultural intensification and political complexity.

Indeed, scholars are critiquing these assumptions in other parts of the Andes as well as more broadly in the New World. Stable isotope anlaysis of skeletal remains from the site of Conchopata suggest that generalized maize consumtion was well established in the Ayacucho Valley by approximately 800 B.C. , and that reliance on maize agriculture preceded the processes of urbanization and formation of the complex Wari polity. Further, dental evidence from the site of Huari indicates that high maize and coca consumption persisted after the decline of the polity . Stable isotope data from mummified humans from the Ayacucho Valley dating to A.D. 1490–1640 also show evidence of sustained maize consumption , suggesting that maize use was not a state introduction but a deeply rooted practice that remained unaffected by state decline. Other areas of the Wari empire were less centered on maize; for example, at the site of Cerro Baul, Goldstein et al. suggest that the importance of molle paralleled the role of maize for the Inka. In their discussion of intensive maize agriculture in the Mississippian world, VanDerwarker et al. also critique uncritical assumptions about maize and political complexity. The Eastern Woodlands region of the United States witnessed the development of several large hierarchically organized polities including Cahokia, the most complex prehistoric polity in North America , Moundville , and Etowah . In the regional literature, intensive maize agriculture has long been treated as a synonym for complexity, included in the suite of cultural hallmarks that define Mississippian, along with shell tempered pottery,ebb and flow table wall trench architecture, moundbuilding, and the presence of hereditary inequality and complex social organization . Most models for the development of sociopolitical hierarchies in early Mississippian polities rely on emerging elites’ ability to control and distribute agricultural surplus . However, in the cases of the three largest Mississippian polities , intensive plant food production preceded the formation of regional hierarchies. In some regions, plant food production appears to have been intensified around the same time as the establishment of local smaller regional political hierarchies . This view suggests that complex forms of social organization are not necessary prerequisites for the intensification of food production .

Surplus production does not determine political complexity, but it certainly appears to be an element that, when combined with other variables , can potentially transform the social and political history of a region. What were the implications for shifts in prehistoric labor, particularly along gendered lines? We can conceptualize this issue in terms of labor related to intensified farming, as well as intensified processing of foodstuffs. In the context of intensification, in addition to expansion of irrigation systems, farmers would have had to reduce crop fallowing time in order to increase yields. To maintain and increase soil fertility, Moche Valley farmers likely maintained some systems of crop rotation and fallow in order to replenish soil nutrients, but also intercropped nitrogen fixing legumes with maize. Weeds likely would have been removed from fields so that cultigens could grow to their full potential; these weeds may have been collected and retained if they held economic value , or they may have unintentionally become incorporated into the Moche Valley archaeobotanical assemblages clinging to livestock or clothing. In addition to crop rotation and nitrogen fixation, farmers may have used camelid dung as fertilizer, likely grazing their animals in harvested and fallowed fields so that the dung could be incorporated into the fields . Site residents also may have dumped kitchen or cleaning ashes onto fields as a source of fertilizer as well. In Boserup’s classic study, The Conditions of Agricultural Growth, she describes various practices that farmers employ to maintain productive fields in the face of shortening fallow periods. While her model has been critiqued for its reliance on population pressure as a primary mechanism for technological change, she nonetheless posits some useful considerations about prehistoric labor and agricultural intensification. Techniques of intensification include tilling soils to remove vegetation, weeding, fertilizing with manure, and irrigation. Boserup argued that ultimately, all of these practices increase work for the farmer. She asserted that intensive agricultural systems did not actually produce more inrelation to effort exerted, and that an inverse relationship existed between labor input and productive yield.

According to Boserup , intensive systems were actually less efficient than extensive long-fallow systems in the long run . I imagine that both local coastal and migrant highland residents of the Moche Valley increased their labor investments during the Gallinazo/Early Moche Phases , as they focused on intensive cultigen production and also maintained tree crop management. Increased labor inputs may have resulted in changes to seasonality and scheduling as well, with respect to preparing fields, planting, tending, and harvesting times. This increased labor investment would have impacted entire families, likely along gendered lines. Bruno discusses gendered labor partitioning related to farming in her discussion of Aymara famers in the Taraco Peninsula of the Lake Titicaca Basin. According to Bruno, agricultural work is shared between different members of the family, as well as friends and neighbors, including work that needs to be completed within a short period of time. Plowing, planting, weeding, and harvesting are all tasks that need to be done at particular moments when conditions are favorable, and these tasks require a good deal of physical labor, which requires the participation and coordination of many people. While field preparation, planting, and harvesting require the help of many people, only a few people perform weeding and crop processing. In contemporary Andean farming systems, women often invest in seed storage, planting, and post-harvest processing , while men tend to engage in field maintenance and harvesting. In the case of the Moche Valley, the shifts in gendered labor that accompany intensive farming appear to have occurred well in advance of Moche political expansion ca. A.D. 300. Aside from planting, field maintenance, and harvesting, in the context of intensive farming, what might the staging of food preparation and processing have looked like? I discuss this issue in the next chapter through a detailed spatial analysis of plant data recovered from MV-225.