Common Identity and Community Formation: A Middle Holocene Case Study in Peru

The formation of food-producing societies, the organizational developments of institutionalized mechanisms for integrating them, and how these foundational mechanisms eventually led to early complex communities still is marginally understood. The socio-economic relationships between a large-scale public monument at Huaca Prieta and outlying domestic sites on the north coast of Peru during the Middle Holocene are examined in terms of community formation and identity-marking. Between ~7000 and 5500 BP population expansion and community integration developed among fishing and farming households residing in different littoral habitats. The development of a cohesive community is viewed in terms of the creation of a communing identity, defined by previously unconnected subgroups of weavers (cotton textiles and fish nets) and seafood specialists and by standardized, inter-household and -subgroup ritual and mortuary acts at Huaca Prieta. This research challenges accepted interpretations such as early communities and public monuments formed by elites controlling food production, exchange networks, and corporate labor.