Shellfish Diplomacy
By trading shellfish for water rights, two ancient Peruvian cultures seem to have avoided war.
by Zach Zorich
Published September 25, 2017
Sixty kilometers is a long way to walk for a clambake, but that’s what brought people to a village called Salitre, in Central Peru, for a span of 140 years in the 15th century.
Salitre was an outpost of the Chancay people, a small village on a trade route that led from the arid Pacific coast, up the Huanangue River valley, and into the foothills of the Andes. Just a few kilometers upstream and across the river from Salitre was another village, once home to the Chaupiyungino people, now known to archaeologists as Campo Libre.
https://www.hakaimagazine.com/article-short/shellfish-diplomacy
