Doctoral Dissertation Research Award: Agrarian Labor and Colonialism

University Of Chicago, Chicago IL

Investigators

Abstract

Raymond Hunter will work alongside colleagues in Peru to study the development of commercialized economies by interrogating labor relations under colonialism. While there have been many previous studies of the development of colonial economic systems, prior research has given less attention to the creative role of agrarian workers in developing economic systems. This project will provide an alternative perspective by clarifying how the decisions of agricultural workers impact the structure of emerging economies. These processes play out over long periods of time - frequently over centuries. Archaeology is ideal to understand changes that emerge over extended periods of time, and further, can provide important insight on the actions of populations that may not be recorded in archives. The project contributes to anthropological theory by developing a conceptual framework to evaluate agrarian labor regimes under colonialism. In doing so, the project engages with an emerging body of anthropological and archaeological literature that explores how global systems are created and shaped by non-elite actors. The research will examine how the agrarian laborers ultimately responsible for agricultural production engaged with the emerging markets through which the product of their labor was dispersed. The work will be conducted in the Cusco region of Peru, a critical nexus of agricultural production and economic development during the Andean Colonial Period (1532-1824 A.D). In Cusco, large quantities of agricultural goods were produced to supply markets in burgeoning mining towns. This production involved newly introduced products and foreign forms of labor organization that were central to the emergence of the colonial economy. The research team will employ a variety of archaeological methods to clarify how agrarian workers negotiated these shifting conditions over the course of the Colonial Period. By combining data from excavations with extant data from a lake core the research will assess shifting patterns of land use, environmental change, production, and consumption during this period of transition. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.