This comprehensive book by Christian Mader forms part of the ever-expanding scientific output from the Paracas Archaeological Project, led by Markus Reindel and Johny Isla (PAP: 1996 to the present day). The PAP is probably the most wide-ranging, detailed and engrossing archaeological project in the Central Andes from the last 30 years, a worthy example of that German tradition somewhat hubristically termed totale archäologie by the late Henning Bischof (1936–2014).
Indeed, the formidable PAP database includes over 1500 recorded sites and years of research, ranging from archaeological surveys and excavations to the latest in scientific methods. It has also been instrumental in producing a large quantity of high-quality PhD research projects over the years. Christian Mader is one of the latest contributors to this increasing field, and this book bears witness to that research. Aside from delving into this rich database, Mader selects 11 sites on which to base his original research, including extensive excavations on three of them: Jauranga near the coast at 285m, Collanco in the productive tropical coastal area known as the yunga (1630m) and Cutamalla at 3300m on the cusp between the temperate, high-valley quechua agricultural and increasingly herding-intensive grassy tundra and high-altitude plateaus known as the suni and puna ecozones.
Rather modestly, Mader's stated aim is to reconstruct the pre-Hispanic economic system of the Paracas (800–200 BC) Culture, especially its Late Paracas (370–200 BC) iteration, along the western slopes of the Palpa River drainage of the Andes in southern Peru; yet the book covers much more than that. Over the last 100 years, the Paracas Culture has been mainly known for the impressive richness of its textile and ceramic art styles and iconography. Here, however, Mader takes the significantly less glamorous theme of the Late Paracas prehistoric economy, based around the transport and exchange of obsidian, seashells and animals (camelids). In so doing, early on (Chapters 2 and 4) he provides the most up-to-date and comprehensive analysis of existing theories and positions on the prehistory of Andean economies. Covering ecological complementarity and verticality, circuit mobility, caravanning, transhumance and markets, Mader delves into the anthropology, ethnology and archaeology behind these various economic systems as detailed by stalwarts such as John V. Murra, Lautaro Núñez, Tom Dillehay and Axel Nielsen, among others. It is an impressive synthesis.
Against this slew of economic systems, Mader sets up his own, termed economic directness. Economic directness borrows from each of the existing Andean economic models and describes how a population with direct access to resources and based on an increasing population and equative settlement (this level of population equilibrium between the coast and highlands only occurs again during the Late Intermediate Period and Late Horizon between AD 1000 and 1532) manages to reach long-term sustainability through down-the-line exchange mechanisms based around strategic settlements or entrepôts. In such a system, resources are internally exchanged within the population, although not necessarily equally. In the case study here, the Western Andean slope of the Palpa River, it seems that insofar as the three products—obsidian, seashells and camelids—were concerned, the highlands were the main supply site, while the coast was the demand area. This is reflected too in the larger number of social differentiation indicators within coastal contexts.
Equally important are Mader's attempts to reconcile these various economic systems with archaeological facts on the ground; in this sense, the table in Chapter 5 (p. 147) is particularly useful as it delineates the limitations of ‘finding’ these models in the field. This measured take on prehistoric economies makes his conclusions seem more plausible, serving as a much more organic and embracive approach to the economic complexities of the Late Paracas period than the single-type models suggested by other writers mentioned above. Indeed, while Mader cautions that his model is singularly applicable to the Late Paracas period, he does nevertheless provide an economic framework that can readily be applied with different emphasis and nuances to other cultures, across time. In summary, Mader's economic directness model has legs.
The book has other advantages; the results (Chapter 4) are subdivided into three sections pertaining to the three types of material Mader analyses for his economic model. All three, obsidian, seashells and camelids, are invariably robust and offer a best-practice method of analysis for these varied materials. Equally valuable are his ‘ideas for future research’ at the end of each section and the final ‘prospects’ (Chapter 6), which provides the necessary pathwork towards new studies into Paracas and, indeed, prehistoric Andean economies.
There are also some surprising interpretive nuggets hidden within the text. The first major theme is that Paracas had such a massive sphere of influence, most of it direct, in the highlands. While Mader is necessarily coy about implications behind the presence of Late Paracas in the highlands, it does posit the possibility of a much wider highland dimension to this supposedly coastal culture, a theme that Markus Reindel has alluded to in his wider research (Reindel et al. Reference Reindel, Isla, Gorbahn and Otten2015). In this case, flower-pattern structure sites such as Cutamalla would be the linchpin settlements for highland Paracas. I would agree, having found the same pattern in the adjacent Ica highlands.
Another important thesis is that in this area of southern Peru we have a completely different pattern of animal husbandry than that revealed by the emerging evidence from northern Peru for coastal pastoralism for this same period. Mader's detailed strontium isotope analysis conclusively shows that while camelids were found across the whole of the coast to the highland transect, they were originally from the high Andes. In essence, if there was ever significant coastal pastoralism in the southern Andes, it did not start with Late Paracas society.
A third crucial aspect was the high prevalence of Jichja Parco/Quispisisa obsidian within the transect sites. 96.4 per cent of the lithic artefacts recovered from these were obsidian, of these 90 per cent were from the Jichja Parco/Quispisisa source. At a mere 63km from this important pre-Hispanic obsidian source, Cutamalla was a gateway settlement for the production and export of obsidian nodules and products throughout the full 160km length of the drainage and across its over 4000m gradient, creating mobility pathways that ebbed and flowed throughout prehistory.
In summary, this is a solid, detailed, well-written book that delves deeply into the Paracas economy, reappraising old models and proposing new ones that I wager will be useful beyond the remits of this case study. End case, Christian Mader's book is simply a must-read for anyone studying South American pre-Hispanic economies.
