ABSTRACT

Over some four millennia of prehistory, the shells of the genus Spondylus were desired, depicted, and deployed in prehispanic Andean societies of vastly different scales and organizations – from small villages to enormous polities, including the Inca Empire. Spondylus shells were used in diverse contexts and settings – as artifacts, raw materials, and icons – by people living thousands of kilometers away from the mollusks’ natural habitat. This chapter considers the multiple settings with political and ritual associations in which Spondylus were deployed in Andean South America. Whether artifacts, raw materials, or icons, Spondylus had several valences, associated with construction rituals, acts of transition including elite burials, and water and agricultural rituals. These latter hydraulic associations became particularly significant after circa A.D. 300, when large-scale agrarian polities emerged in the Central and Southern Andes.