Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Political Power and the Use of Geographic Space

University Of New Mexico, Albuquerque NM

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to evaluate how empires organized the architecture of provincial settlements to communicate political messages. There are many studies of how polities throughout history used monuments and ostentatious buildings to communicate power. However, analyses of how settlement layout can create and maintain inequality are few and focus mainly on modern examples. Illuminating this issue within one case will add needed historical depth and cultural breadth to the understanding of architectural communication. The results will be useful to researchers and members of the public interested in the exercise of power through the everyday experience of the built environment. The research will also strengthen international partnerships and provide materials for descendant communities to use in heritage planning. A well-preserved site provides an uncommon opportunity to examine in detail the relationship between layout and provincial architectural communication. Researchers hypothesize that the Empire broadly reorganized this local provincial site's layout to evoke other seats of central authority through formal similarities, and to manipulate pedestrian movement through the settlement to make monuments more visible during the daily, lived experience of site inhabitants. The researchers will evaluate these propositions by conducting two primary analyses. The first will date organic materials from archaeological strata associated with wall construction to build an absolute chronology of site growth and modification and determine if the formal similarities between this and other seats of imperial power indeed reflect manipulation of site architecture. The second uses high-resolution spatial data and a Geographic Information Systems software platform to reconstruct pedestrian movement along internal avenues and the visibility of political monuments within the settlement. 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.