The Environmental Null: Documenting the Changing Influence of Physical and Social Environments on Prehistoric Andean Diets

Andean studies of the impact of social and political processes on diet have a long history (Hastorf and Johannessen 1993; Pozorski 1979; Turner and Klaus 2020; Tykot, Burger, and van der Merwe 2006) and have provided invaluable information on issues such as imperial impacts (Bray 2003; Toyne et al. 2017; Williams and Murphy 2013), cooperation (Stanish, Tantaleán, and Knudson 2018), fertilization of crops (Finucane 2007), socioeconomic specialization (Marsteller, Zolotova, and Knudson 2017), and social inequality and complex societies (Cuéllar 2013; Quilter and Stocker 1983) in pre-Hispanic Andean life. However, quantifying sociopolitical factors is difficult, and thus, studies have rarely attempted