Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Integration and Culture Change

University Of Texas At Austin, Austin TX

Investigators

Abstract

This doctoral dissertation project will investigate how states consolidate power and expand territorial control by transforming rural landscapes. Specifically, this project will track the formation of an imperial heartland in a region inhabited by politically fragmented agropastoral groups. Throughout history, state societies have transformed landscapes to naturalize their authority and discredit indigenous inhabitants by alleging mismanagement of natural resources and land. Although modern nation-states have established borders, disputed land claims still trigger conflict in many world regions and marginalized populations fight for sovereignty and territorial integrity by contesting state authority. This project looks at how states claim occupied territories and support expansion by transforming existing built environments and evaluates the efficacy of such endeavors over the long term. Archaeology is an excellent tool to track the successes and failures of political projects across expansive temporal and spatial scales. Using archaeological methods, this research will evaluate strategies of political sovereignty and identify contradictions that threaten the longevity of state societies, as manifested in the built environment. This project will be conducted in close collaboration with early-career researchers in Peru, providing training and capacity-building opportunities. In addition to forming the basis of dissertation research, two local archaeology students will conduct their thesis research in tandem with the project for the completion of their degrees. The research team will analyze construction and landscape modification practices to understand how the Inkas established and managed their imperial heartland. Taking a long-term view over roughly half a millennium sheds light on the changing geopolitical conditions that shaped this region and the legacies of non-state political units. Ethnically diverse agropastoral groups settled in the Sacred Valley and began to build hilltop villages, agricultural terraces, and above-ground tombs across this mountainous landscape. Centuries later the Inka ethnic group had expanded political influence into the valley; their increasing presence was materialized in irrigated agricultural lands along the valley floor and administrative outposts in local (non-Inka) territories. By the Spanish invasion the valley had become foundational in supporting the Inkas’ sovereign ideology and political economy, which operated through estate systems and intensive landscape engineering projects. How did the Inkas’ strategies of expansion respond to the existing built environment? And how did the Inkas’ interventions impact local inhabitants and landscapes? This research will respond to these questions by defining the practices that shaped this landscape during the late pre-Hispanic period, including the standardization of architecture, centralization of agricultural systems, and diversity in mortuary practices. The contributions of this project include the development of an innovative research methodology that quantitatively measures variation in construction techniques to compare the sociopolitical context of production at local and regional scales. The data produced by this study can be compared with global cases to better understand human behavior including landscape modification practices and territoriality. 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.