Branden Cesare Rizzuto

BRANDEN RIZZUTO, then a graduate student at University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, was approved funding in October 2022 to aid research on “On Prills and Pins: Pre-Columbian Metallurgy at the Middle Horizon (600 – 1000 CE) Site of Huaca Colorada, Jequetepeque Valley, North Coast of Peru,” supervised by Dr. Edward Swenson. From 2009 to 2022, excavations at the Late Moche–Transitional site of Huaca Colorada (ca. 700-900 CE), located in the Jequetepeque Valley on the North Coast of Peru, produced more than 2700 objects spanning the entire metallurgical production sequence. Such an assemblage presented a rare and unique opportunity to investigate pre-Columbian metallurgy on the North Coast of Peru and the relationships between these technologies and shifting religious and political institutions which characterized this region during the Middle Horizon Period (ca. 600 – 1000 CE). Diachronic comparisons of the production and consumption of metal objects at Huaca Colorada demonstrates that shifts in metallurgy coincided with large-scale transformations in the site’s politics and religion, a reconfiguration of interregional networks, and likely other social, political, and religious transformations known to have characterized the North Coast of Peru during the 9th century CE. Furthermore, results show that metallurgical materials and metallurgy itself were imbued with cosmological significance and played an important role in the ritual economy of Huaca Colorada. Ultimately, metallurgical materials likely formed an ontological continuum with humans, non-human animals, and spaces at Huaca Colorada, structuring their use as sacrificial and dedicatory offerings, independently or in conjunction with other living things.