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Community Settlement Patterns at Chan Chan, Peru

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Michael West
Michael West*
Affiliation:
University of VirginiaCharlottesville, Virginia
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Abstract

A recent surface survey was conducted at the site of Chan Chan, Peru, for purposes of investigating the nature of community settlement patterns. Previous writers have tended to view these in terms of the speculated sociological implications of specific largescale architectural features known as ciudadelas. In doing so they have neglected an extremely important body of information regarding the many small and inconspicuous building units that are closely associated with the ciudadelas. The present survey concentrated on the smaller complexes and provided data that were relevant to studying aspects of community settlement patterning such as house types, distribution of public buildings, street layouts, distribution of population types, population size and density. The results indicate that the range of social activities that were engaged in at Chan Chan during its flourish cannot possibly be understood in terms of the implications of large-scale architecture. It is suggested here that the overall community settlement pattern of Chan Chan is coincidental to the configuration described by Sjoberg (1965) for the typical preindustrial city. The hypotheses and suggestions generated by this study provide a base or foundation for future research at the site.

Type
Research Article
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 35 , Issue 1 , January 1970 , pp. 74 - 86
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1970

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