Agriculture and the onset of political inequality before the Inka /

Hastorf analyzes inequalities in agricultural production in the Central Highlands of Peru, particularly for the Regional State/Late Intermediate cultural period (900-1450 CE). The book is based on Hastorf's PhD thesis and her fieldwork from 1978 to 1980, under the Upper Mantaro Archaeological Research Project. The project generated many works and thus it is inescapable that this study reviews materials previously published in these sources. What is new and different is Hastorf's presentation of agricultural production models for the 1978 to 1980 period, based on interviews with 168 local farmers, and the elaborate and thorough analyses of the paleoethnobotanical materials recovered during the excavations. The textual discussion of these materials is greatly enhanced by 30 figures and graphs detailing archaeobotanical interpretations, plus seven appendixes (36 pages) listing all the basic raw data on which the analyses are based. Hastorf argues that agricultural production is one of the most important domains where cultural change can be identified archaeologically, and that identified trajectories in agricultural energetics reflect associated changes in political inequality. The book will be of particular interest to Peruvian paleoethnobotanists and more generally to students of Latin American prehistory. Extensive (25 pages) references and good index. Undergraduate; graduate; faculty. D. L. Browman; Washington University