Alluvium and empire: the archaeology of colonial resettlement and Indigenous persistence on Peru's north coast presents the results of more than a decade of interdisciplinary research on the impact of Spanish colonialism on the Indigenous population of the northern Peruvian coast during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. To produce this volume, VanValkenburgh, director of the Zaña Colonial Archaeological Project (PAZC), brought together prominent Peruvian and foreign researchers to conduct archaeological survey across an area of 150km2 in the lower Zaña Valley. This was followed by systematic excavations and more detailed, targeted surveys (both geographical and architectural) that included the collection of ceramic, zooarchaeological and palaeobotanical material. This fieldwork was complemented by extensive laboratory work (radiocarbon dating, flotation of palaeobotanical material, ceramic classification, georeferencing of satellite photographs), as well as research on colonial documents from Peruvian and Spanish archives (the latter in Seville).
The 306-page volume opens with a remarkable introduction that sets the scene, presenting theoretical themes and research proposals. This is followed by five chapters showcasing the results of the PAZC, including a complete and up-to-date bibliography and an onomastic index. Throughout the book, VanValkenburgh analyses the social and political relationships between the Spanish and the Zaña Indigenous group during the colonial period, including both groups’ resilience against the valley's inclement physical environment.
Informed by the work of Michel Foucault, VanValkenburgh's introduction proposes and discusses a theoretical approach to genealogical landscapes, narrating the emergence and transformation of subjective forms associated with power that trace the development of social and political institutions. This focus is more than a totalising theoretical framework; rather, it is a means to assess critically the relations between two antagonistic social groups: the Spanish and the Indigenous population, who long shared the particular and rather adverse environment of the Zaña Valley.
The author also uses the introduction to analyse previous studies conducted on Spanish reductions in Peru. Reductions were settlements in which many Indigenous people were compulsorily resettled from the sixteenth century onwards. Here, VanValkenburgh also discusses the emerging alliances between the conquerors and the conquered in the north of the country, emphasising the subjective political forms and discourses (at the micro and macro level) that were generated as a result of this power confrontation during the Spanish colonial period.
In the following five chapters, the author presents the results of PAZC research on the genealogy of the Spanish Empire during the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, including the reduction of local populations, and the Spanish and Indigenous policies of negotiation and renegotiation within the Zaña Valley. This research is based on primary source data—archaeological and ethnohistorical. Among a variety of other topics addressed in these sections, VanValkenburgh argues that although the term ‘empire’ is useful in referring to the expansive policies of the Spanish, imperial power is more complex, dissimilar and fluid than it first appears. This is because local people, as well as the landscape, play an important role, both synchronously and diachronically, in the dynamic relations of power established between conquerors and the conquered—in this case between the Spanish and Indigenous groups.
The sum of the social and geographical difficulties—not to mention other problems—that the Viceroyalty of Peru (the Spanish imperial administration) faced must have shaped, or at least redirected, the policies of the Spanish Empire during its conception and development, until the first decades of the nineteenth century. Therefore, the interdisciplinary data on the Hispanic reduction of Indigenous populations in Zaña presented in this book mark an interesting comparative path to appraise and understand the complexity of Spanish power in Peru. This is because, as VanValkenburgh points out, it is poor practise to totalise forms of governments under the shadow of ‘generalising terms’; it is better to see, analyse and reveal their particularities, both at the level of their structures and their superstructures.
The conclusions presented in this volume, validated by years of interdisciplinary research at Zaña, demonstrate that rethinking the country's Hispanic past is a critical means through which to understand the social and territorial complexity that Spanish rulers faced for almost 300 years. Additionally, in understanding this Hispanic past, it is necessary to comprehend better the background of the area occupied by the Spanish rulers and, as the author reveals, the impact that this form of government had on the Indigenous inhabitants after the completion of the Toledean reforms.
