The Archaeology of Dual Organization in Andean South America: A Theoretical Review and Case Study

Abstract

The concept of dualism has become a major theme in archaeological, ethnohistoric, and ethnographic studies of native South American societies. This article reviews use of the concept by archaeologists and ethnohistorians in the Andes, and considers an ethnohistoric and archaeological case from the Nepeña Valley of the Peruvian North Coast. The review shows that various ideas have been described by the terms “dualism” or “dual organization,” and that archaeologists have interpreted paired sets of remains as the material expressions of dualism. The Nepeña Valley data document a paradoxical case in which the power of local lords, who shared rule, was based on dual organizations, and yet the settlement pattern is clearly hierarchical. This suggests that although dual principles may have formed the social syntax of authority, political power—particularly access to labor—was asymmetric, suggesting, in turn, the need to reconsider the relationship between material remains and complex social principles such as dualism in archaeological approaches to prehistoric social and political organizations.