Under the supervision of Dr. Marc Bermann, Giancarlo Marcone will analyze data generated from archaeological excavations at the site of Cerro Manchay on the Peruvian central coast. Cerro Manchay (also known as "Lote B") is a settlement pertaining to an important regional archaeological culture known as the Lima culture. Poorly known to date, the Lima Culture offers an excellent context for researching aspects of sociopolitical transformation in Andean prehistory. Several prehistorians have argued for a major societal shifts in the this around AD 550 - 650, contemporaneous with the expansion to the coast of the highland Wari Empire, shifts that perhaps even represent the development of state-level society for the Lima population.
Cerro Manchay is a 1 ha site, located on a hill overlooking the LurÃn valley and straddling one of the paths that connect this valley to the major prehistoric Lima Culture centers in the neighboring Rimac valley, an area now covered by the modern city of Lima. Preliminary work has shown that the site can be divided into four sectors: a zone of domestic architecture, spread over the top of the hill; a second residential area of agglutinated, irregular house clusters; a building composed of rectangular rooms delineated by open spaces that may be yards or plazas; and a rectangular compound with large walls. Each sector is spatially separated from the others, and each displays at least one associated, major midden or disposal area. Mapping and systematic excavation of residential, public and disposal areas in the different sectors of the site will generate the data on interhousehold variability in domestic architecture, household activities, and consumption, needed to understand the nature of status and wealth variability at the site
Research focus on community integration and household-level socioeconomic differentiation at the site is important because allow identification of changes through time in the postures and activities associated with Lima social leadership. The research also addresses some broad issues in the study of complex societies, such as the roles played by staple production, craft production, ceremonial practices and external contacts in social inequality. In particular, investigation focuses on determining if the increase in political centralization seen at the regional-level, was concomitant with the development of a new sociopolitical order at the community level. Specifically, the research explores whether changes at Cerro Manchay shows evidence for increasing: (1) economic differentiation (ranging from craft-specialization to staple production to wealth accumulation); (2) elite domination of ritual practice; and/or (3) elite emulation, in activities and stylistic preferences, of elites in other regions.
Beyond research questions of interest to social scientists, this project will have a broader impact by enhancing the level of public understanding of science in the communities at the LurÃn valley, and fostering collaboration on study of complex societies between scholars from Peru and the United States. The inclusion of Peruvian students and local workers in the project, together with the experience of the author as Peruvian state-archaeologist for the area and current teaching responsibilities at a Peruvian University, is going to be the base for outreach to local, national and international communities, through conferences and preliminary informs distributed to school principals, community leaders, and local authorities. The research findings will be presented in Peruvian and international journals. The project aims to develop the site (and the work there) as a model of working with the patriomonio where archaeo-tourism is of increasing economic importance, and where the prehispanic legacy around the city of Lima continues to be destroyed by urban expansion.
