Under the supervision of Dr. Paul S. Goldstein, Sarah Baitzel will analyze and compare burial contexts associated with the high-altitude Tiwanaku culture (A.D. 500-1000), one of the earliest expansive states to arise in the South American Andes. The burials were excavated in 2010-2011 at the site of Omo M10, a Tiwanaku colony located in the Moquegua Valley of Southern Peru on the western slopes of the Andes. Although the work focuses on a single prehistoric culture its intellectual relevance is broad and has present day relevance because it provides insight into the mechanisms through which members of diverse ethnic identities were able to integrate into a unified social group.
Being the only Tiwanaku colonial settlement with a temple, the Omo M10 site occupied an important role in the region as a religious or administrative center. The spatial separation of burials into 13 cemeteries located around the temple forms the basis for this comparative research. By testing whether patterns in the distribution of grave offerings and mourning activities correspond with the spatial sectoring of cemeteries, this project will investigate in what ways this reflected the social order of Tiwanaku colonial society. The uniquely large and well-preserved burial sample from Omo M10 will allow Ms. Baitzel to investigate funerary rituals in their entirety, ranging from more traditional materials like human remains and pottery to rare preserved cloth and food items.
Understanding how individuals formed and maintained their social identity as members both of ethnic kin groups and participants in newly emerging states plays a central role in the study of early complex societies. Mortuary archaeology offers two distinct advantages for this investigation: it directly links material evidence of funerary activities to the deceased individuals. In addition, it focuses on a period of social crisis, during which the death of a community member requires mourners to reaffirm and public assert and display their affiliation. Accordingly, this research contributes to Tiwanaku and Andean archaeology a new perspective of how rituals created and maintained different identities social relations; the results will also present a comparative case study for similar research on complex societies around the world. The combination of a quantitative, material-oriented methodology and a theoretical focus on social practice, ritual and identity formation bridges divided and diverging schools of thought in the field of mortuary archaeology.
This research will have a broader impact both at the local and international level. The data resulting from this research will provide a comparative sample and database that will serve as a resource for future investigations, and will form the basis of several upcoming doctoral dissertation projects in the U.S. The proposed analyses bring together specialists and students from U.S. (University of Florida, Arizona State University) and Peruvian institutions (Universidad Cayetano Heredia, Lima) to provide opportunities for collaboration and training. The resulting publications written for peer-reviewed journals and a public audience will be made available to local institutions and libraries in English and Spanish; presentations of the research will be directed towards academic audiences in the U.S., Peru and Chile, as well as the general public in Moquegua. Special emphasis will be placed on disseminating this research to the public through local institutions and media to advance understanding of the region's prehistory and to raise awareness about conservation of cultural patrimony.
The goal of the Omo M10 project is to study the processes of social differentiation in early state societies through the burial practices of the pre-Colonial Andean highland state of Tiwanaku (A.D. 500-1000). Funerary rituals and commemorative events in Tiwanaku and elsewhere are considered to be potent (re)iteration of group membership, status, and other social identities. By comparing the data from human remains and offerings within the spatial context of the tomb, archaeologists can gain insight into many areas of society, including community relations, social hierarchies and ideology. The results of the Omo M10 project provide evidence that Tiwanaku burials and rituals of remembrance contributed to the strengthening of individual community identities while maintaining social cohesion within the state at large. With the support of the National Science Foundation grant SBE-BCS 1240079, the Omo M10 project completed the analysis of all archaeological materials from 211 Tiwanaku burials distributed across thirteen distinct cemetery areas at the site of Omo M10, Moquegua, Peru, during the 2010-2011 field season. The 2571 analyzed specimens included 73 whole ceramic vessels and 7112 ceramic fragments, of which over 90% were assigned to the Tiwanaku style, confirming the affiliation of the burial population with this culture. Cultural affiliation was also confirmed in the ubiquitous presence of cranial deformation, a distinct bodily marker of Tiwanaku identity. A unique feature of the Omo M10 site and its material remains is the excellent preservation of organic materials such as textiles, wooden artifacts and foodstuffs, which are generally not recovered in the highland center of the Tiwanaku state. Analyses of these materials revealed that funerary rituals consisted of several stages, which included the initial dressing of the deceased in everyday as well as ceremonial elite garments for the purpose of interment. The graves were furnished with a choice of personal items, tools, and above all serving wares and food remains that attested to the importance of feasting and collective consumption during the funerary process. In addition, the repeated and continuous visitation of cemetery areas as demonstrated through the presence of feasting and ritual paraphernalia on the cemetery surface suggests the importance of the deceased in Tiwanaku community life as keepers of social memory and venerated ancestor figures. The unequal distribution of artifacts such as cooking vessels, marine shells, and incense burners across the mortuary landscape of Omo M10 indicates that ethnic sub-communities of the Tiwanaku state expressed social differences in public settings to renew their collective memories and sense of community; nonetheless, their choices for doing so were informed by the constraints of Tiwanaku ceremonial and ideological canons. The Omo M10 project contributes to current debates in the field of Andean, mortuary and anthropological archaeology by focusing on issues of ritual practice, identity and social memory formation. Current models of the Tiwanaku state emphasize the importance of ritual practice for balancing the juxtaposed forces of social cohesion and difference. The research results of this project support these models, suggesting that rituals surrounding death played an important role in forming community identities and maintaining social structures of differentiation. Mortuary rituals – a subset of the general Tiwanaku ritual canon - take on a larger cultural and social significance whereby the veneration of the dead correlates with the formation of group memories central to the ethnic and social identities of state subject groups. This informs similar anthropological and sociological studies of identity formation with a deep-time perspective. To date, modern nation-states experience and struggle with social and ethnic diversity often manifest in rituals and ceremonies that allow their members to participate in a shared consciousness and identity. Beyond its intellectual merits, the Omo M10 project has also included educational components in the professional and public spheres. Two Peruvian university students from UN Puno participated in the original excavations, and later on in the conservation and analysis of archaeological materials. The project employed five Peruvian technicians and advanced training and laboratory work experiences were extended largely to women, a demographic sector heavily underrepresented in the sciences in many regions of Latin America, including Peru. This opportunity for professionalization will lead to improved employment and educational opportunities for both students and technicians alike. Furthermore, the preliminary results of the research have been disseminated in public and professional forums, including the SAA and IAS meetings in the US and international academic and professional conferences on Andean archaeology such as the Congreso Nacional de Arqueología Chilena and the Jornada de Arqueología Surandina and their resulting publications. In addition, I led over 10 guided visits of the Omo M10 archaeological site during the grant period for students, press, teachers, and the public authorities of Moquegua. These have increased public awareness about the importance to protect archaeological sites from the expansion of agricultural lands and the possibility of outreach and tourism development.
