Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ychsma Community Construction: Dietary Practices, Rituals and Group Identity

Arizona State University, Scottsdale AZ

Investigators

Abstract

Communities are dynamic phenomena created through the social practices and interactions of diverse individual members. Ancient communities, however, often are portrayed as internally uniform social groups linked to specific archaeological sites. Under the supervision of Dr. Kelly Knudson, Sara Marsteller will use bioarchaeological evidence of social practices associated with specific individuals to investigate the complexities of community identity formation within the Ychsma society of the central Peruvian coast during the period between AD 900-1470. Across the world today communities both act as decision making entities and serve to influence individual member's behavior. Given their central role they constitute an important object for scientific study. This proposed research will provide insight how such entities can be understood in a cross cultural perspective and how they developed over time. Specifically, the project will examine three important aspects of community formation: (1) the relationship between geographic space and symbolic community boundaries, (2) the influence of diverse subgroups within the community on community boundary formation, and (3) the negotiation of community boundaries by outsiders. Using the Ychsma society of Peru as a case study, Ms. Marsteller's analyses will focus on dietary practices and mortuary rituals as social practices potentially used to signify Ychsma community identity. She will reconstruct dietary practices through osteological analyses of patterns of dental disease and tooth wear and through chemical analyses of stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes from archaeological human tissue samples. Ms. Marsteller will reconstruct mortuary rituals associated with specific individuals through the analysis of body treatment and positioning, grave goods and structure, and burial location. Current archaeological research on communities argues that individual members were responsible for the creation and transformation of past communities. Ms. Marsteller's project will build on this research to demonstrate how diverse community members' actions can be revealed with bioarchaeological data from human skeletal remains and their associated burial contexts. At a regional level, the project seeks to develop a more holistic perspective of Ychsma social relationships during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900-1470). Such a perspective will further understanding of the degree to which later sociopolitical changes brought about by Inka imperial expansion and Spanish colonization impacted local indigenous groups. Additionally, Ms. Marsteller's study will examine the role of Ychsma commoners in sociopolitical interactions, and thus will complement previous investigations of Ychsma social organization that focus on ethnohistoric and archaeological data associated with the Ychsma elite. Ms. Marsteller's project will have broader impacts beyond its research goals. The research will generate and synthesize multiple types of bioarchaeological data for use by the anthropological community. All results will be made available via English and Spanish publications in peer-reviewed journals and online for public use. In addition, one Peruvian and two North American undergraduate students will receive research experience and hands-on training in bioarchaeological field or laboratory methods for use in their future careers. Finally, the project will initiate international collaborations among researchers from two Peruvian institutions--the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos and the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Arqueología e Historia del Peru--and Arizona State University.