30/01/2026
A guest lecture, Wed 11 Feb (4-5 pm), SRU Seminar Room (Sainsbury Centre), by Dr Ben Vining, this year at Cambridge (Wolfson College, McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research), on:
"Not the destination but the journey: the influence of early long-distance mobility on the emergence of the Chavín interaction sphere in the central Andes"
Abstract (authors: B. Vining, M. Young & J. Jennings): Migration and long-distance mobility networks were critical in the development of civilizations and provided mechanisms by which people, cultural ideas, religio-political structures and material goods moved throughout the central Andes. This paper presents a modular, analytical geospatial framework that can be used to develop and test questions about the role of mobility at various points in Andean prehistory, and how this may have contributed to the subsequent emergence of political centers; economic networks; socially, ethnically, and biologically differentiated populations; and environmental changes. Using an iterative corridor-estimation approach, we show how movement between specific resource locations and early Initial Period politically- and religiously-important centers throughout central – northern Peru may have contributed to the emergence of cultural networks in the subsequent Formative period, especially the Chavin phenomenon. These results confirm relationships between long-distance transport of exotic commodities and the emergence of expansive networks that have long been hypothesized, but rarely tested explicitly.
