Local Food, Interregional Rituals: Insights Into Wari Imperialism From Zooarchaeology at El Palacio, Cajamarca, Peru

ABSTRACT The scholarship on the Wari Empire (ca. 600–1050 ce ), the earliest pan‐Andean expansive polity, has been undergoing critical reevaluation, paralleling broader shifts in the discipline of ancient empire studies. This recent paradigm shift offers an alternative to earlier research strategies, which focused on finding evidence of Wari uniformity and extensive resource extraction. Instead, newer research suggests that Wari's socioeconomic strategies were more nuanced, resulting in varied political outcomes across different regions. Our study adds to this body of knowledge by investigating animal use in the overlooked northern Wari sphere of influence within the modern Cajamarca department. The zooarchaeological analysis of 5871 faunal specimens from two spatial units at El Palacio, a Wari regional administrative center in southern Cajamarca, revealed that the site primarily relied on domesticated native fauna, mainly small camelids and guinea pigs, for both subsistence and ritual purposes. Reliance on domesticates was supplemented with occasionally procuring wildlife such as vicuña, puma, and white‐tailed deer; the presence of the latter was identified with a supplemental ZooMS analysis. The regional focus of El Palacio's animal use supports the earlier assumptions about the Cajamarca region's self‐reliant status within the Wari political network and reinforces the view of the Wari economic hegemony as a varied and flexible process.