Land, Labor, and Water of the Ancient Agricultural Pampa De Mocan, North Coast, Peru

Abstract

The Pampa de Mocan, located on the margins of the Chicama Valley on the north coast of Peru, is a superarid desert that was developed for agriculture between 900 BC-AD 1470. Current scholarship on the relationship between agriculture and complexity in arid regions operates under two assumptions: first, that desert environments impose limitations on smallholders; and second, that intensive, irrigation agriculture forces farmers to become sedentary. Excavation, survey and archaeobotanical data from the Pampa de Mocan challenge these assumptions by demonstrating a history of 1) ecological dynamism in the desert and 2) the practice of peripatetic irrigation agriculture. Ancient farmers of the Pampa de Mocan rotated around the Valley, basin, and even the greater region. This system of intensive agriculture without permanent settlement functioned as a risk-management strategy in an environment that frequently weathered unpredictable and destructive events related to El Niño Southern Oscillation (ENSO). This dissertation concludes that the farmers of Mocan organized their strategies around maximizing water, rather than the expansion of production over land. However, beginning soon after Spanish Conquest, the Chicama Valley underwent a forced resettlement program; the concentration of populations in newly-established urban centers instigated a socioeconomic shift toward private land rights and the maximization of available land. Since that time, the area has suffered widespread water shortages. In reaction to the scarcity of water today, the Peruvian State has enacted a regional irrigation program to expand agricultural production into desert areas, including the Pampa de Mocan. The abandonment of prehispanic concepts of water management in favor of a land-tenure economy re-arranged the relationship between land, labor, and water and catalyzed a self-reinforcing feedback loop of resource concentration, followed by redistribution that continues to shape the Chicama Valley and Peruvian state politics today.