Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Development Of Ritual And Social Solidarity

University Of California-Los Angeles, Los Angeles CA

Investigators

Abstract

Dr. Charles Stanish and Mr. Benjamin Nigra of the University of California, Los Angeles, along with Peruvian colleagues, will investigate the role of scheduled political events in the emergence of early complex societies. Prior research suggests that intensified interaction between independent communities is key to the establishment of early political hierarchies and regional economic cooperation. Scheduled economic events, mediated through ritual in which disparate communities gather together at regular intervals at recognized locations, serve as public forums in which strangers exchange, communicate norms, build novel economic relationships, and vie for social status. As small communities become unified into regional polities, ceremonial events often lose their public character and become restricted to specific social classes such as elites or specialists. This investigation asks: under what material and social conditions do ritual events become exclusive? Why do some events remain open to the general public while participation in others becomes strictly guarded? What are the regional economic impacts of massive public gatherings, and how do these impacts change with emerging social inequality? Archaeology is uniquely suited to address this question by accessing long-term data on the pre-modern economics and long-term social processes. "Ritualized' economic events are not restricted to the ancient world, but remain ever present in the modern day United States. These events, all highly ritualized and involving representatives from independent (and often competing) groups, have notable economic and political consequences for how segments of modern society form larger cooperative communities. Stanish and Nigra will examine the specific modes of economic investment that independent communities made in the construction, upkeep and participation in massive, monumental ceremonial structures among the Paracas peoples of the Peruvian south coast (800 BCE - 200 CE). They will focus on several sites in the Chincha Valley, where cooperative labor between independent Paracas communities was used to construct at least a dozen platform structures containing deep sunken courts. The researchers will radiocarbon date non-local offerings recovered from one of these monuments, Huaca Soto, to determine when it was constructed, for how long it was used for ceremonial purposes, and the date of its eventual decommissioning. By combining these dates with stratigraphic excavations focused on the depositions of long-distance trade goods as ritual offerings, architectural renovations over time that restricted public access, and the establishment of early urban communities around the base of the structure, they will reconstruct the early economic networks and intercommunity dynamics that led to the establishment of strong political hierarchies and social inequality by the beginning of first millennium CE. All aspects of the proposed research will be conducted as part of field training for American undergraduates and will expose students to field excavation, survey, specialist data analyses, and conservation of archaeological sites and remains.