Michelle Elizabeth Young

Archaeologists continue to grapple with the question of how and why complex societies developed out of earlier, small-scale groups. In the Andes region, considered one of the few independent cradles of civilization, megalithic ceremonial centers engaged in long-distance exchange of exotic resources, shared material culture, the development and spread of new craft technologies, and increasing social hierarchy, indicate the emergence of socially complex communities in the early 1st millennium BCE. These communities are referred to collectively as the Chavín horizon, Chavín Interaction Sphere or the “Chavín Phenomenon” (Burger and Nesbitt 2023). Despite decades of archaeological speculation, remarkably little is yet understood about the social, political, economic, and ideological mechanisms that produced this widespread cultural phenomenon. This book project presents a detailed archaeological case study from Atalla, one such megalithic center in Huancavelica, Peru, to explore the conditions and relationships that motivated this community’s participation in wider interregional networks and engage in socially complex behavior. Excavation and survey data reveal both the historically particular and multimodal nature of the Chavín Phenomenon, offering a new pericentric approach for modeling economic and social development that reshapes our understanding of the origins of social complexity.