News

 

WESTON McCOOL, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Barbara
 

 

Warfare was a prevalent and significant practice throughout the Andes during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 1000–1450). A salient research topic within broader investigations of conflict is how populations cope with chronic warfare. This presented research utilizes statistical and geospatial analyses of architectural features and settlement patterns to reconstruct defensive coping mechanisms among fifteen fortified settlements in the southern valleys of Nasca, Peru.

 

Specifically, this research evaluates how populations deployed artificial defenses (fortifications), natural defensibility, and settlement placement to best protect themselves and critical resources from enemy incursions. Results demonstrate that slope was the most significant factor guiding the construction of intra-site fortifications. Patterns in inter-site fortification were primarily driven by population size, whereby the smallest and most vulnerable settlements are the most heavily fortified and occupy the least accessible areas. Settlement patterns were largely driven by natural defensibility, large viewsheds, and proximity to economic resources. This research demonstrates that LIP populations made optimal trade-offs between competing defensive variables, revealing highly patterned regional defensive strategies.

Patty Chirinos

 

During the Middle Horizon (AD 700-1100), a period characterized by an intensive cultural interaction between several polities, the Wari Empire emerged and expanded, extending its influence over the Central Andes. Wari colonial expansion had a profound impact on both the political structure and the daily activities of the local communities. Wari presence and influence have been correlated with significant changes in material culture, settlement patterns, productive activities, levels of social disruption, and the establishment of colonies. However, Wari expansion to northern Peru seems to have been markedly different: several monumental sites exhibiting the features of Wari imperial design were built and then hardly occupied. Colonies represent a high-risk investment in infrastructure and logistics, and most significantly represent power relationships and are imbued with them. Within this context, why such massive efforts and then such profound changes occurred? And why in this circumscribed region of the empire? In this presentation, I address these questions by documenting the briefly-occupied Wari colony of Yamobamba in the Cajamarca Basin, tracing the dynamic process of Wari occupation of Cajamarca, and providing a framework to understand why the politically-savvy Wari changed their course.

 

 

Mallory Melton

 

How do we come to understand the early colonial period as it was experienced at the fringes? In other words, how do we assess the impacts of colonial events on regions that were seldom visited by Europeans but nevertheless contained coalescent communities harboring refugees who understood firsthand the social, political, and economic destabilization set in motion by European contact? Employing a diachronic approach, this paper uses archaeobotanical, ceramic, and architectural data from the Wall, Jenrette, and Fredricks sites to assess the impacts of European contact on indigenous residents of the seventeenth-century North Carolina Piedmont. Archaeobotanical data reveal that occupants of the Jenrette site (A.D. 1650-1680) adopted risk-averse foodways, while ceramic and architectural evidence indicates that these changes likely occurred in the context of a coalescent village containing Occaneechi refugees who endured social, political, and economic challenges prior to arriving in the Piedmont. Drawing comparisons to the Cherokee, I suggest that Jenrette residents modified their foodways in reaction to personally-experienced crises and/or the volatility that plagued much of the Southeast during the colonial period. Finally, I call for a broad approach to evaluating colonial-period community formation processes that avoids limiting our vantage point to any one particular locale. Instead, I encourage exploration of the many overlapping and intersecting histories that played out across a social landscape of instability.

Congratulations to Sarah Alami, who just won best student presentation/paper at the AAAs in Minneapolis (the Evolutionary Anthropology Society section).