Alexander Menaker, of the University of Texas-Austin, along with colleagues in Peru will carry out research examining how religion and ideology promote and legitimize imperial growth as well as investigating the effects of imperial expansion and colonial programs on local landscapes and populations. Although imperial ideologies claim absolute and universal authority, recent scholarship has emphasized the varied processes and relations through which states and empires attempt to exert control over people and territories outside of their geographic boundaries. Attending to the material conditions of life, archaeological research has illuminated the limits and local manifestations of states and empires, bringing into question written sources and absolute claims made by states and empires. Archaeology is poised to reconstruct local engagements with states and empires over the long-term, tracing the complex interactions among local and non-local state actors and populations, thus also challenging reductive binaries, such as, domination/resistance, European/Indigenous, and prehistoric/historic categorizations. This research demonstrates how the archaeological record along with multiple lines of evidence not only yields insight into local realities but also foregrounds productive approaches for investigating the experiences and conditions of local, often marginalized and indigenous, populations entangled among broader regional and global processes. This project promotes collaboration among local community members along with forming partnerships with Peruvian archaeologists and academics, with this project contributing to discussions of cultural heritage and encouraging local community involvement in considering and protecting materials of significant community importance. The research is of direct relevance to understanding contemporary issues of state maintenance and boundaries.
With this dissertation project, Mr. Menaker and his research team will conduct an archaeological and historical examination of Andagua and the Ayo Valley in the Southern Peruvian Andes, investigating the local cultural history and offering a comparative study of Inka and Spanish imperial strategies and effects in the region from AD1000-1800. Despite growing studies of the Inka there remain considerable gaps in research concerning Inka imperial expansion in the Southern Peruvian Andes, and while historical archaeology of Spanish colonialism in the Andes is currently a burgeoning field, few studies offer substantive comparative research of pre-Hispanic and Spanish imperial effects on a region. Historical accounts describe how the Inkas intensified local settlements and constructed new sites in the region, resettling populations to labor in administrative and ceremonial sites dedicated to sacred volcanoes and mountains. Constructed as a Spanish colonial reducción, with the forced resettlement of indigenous people, and surrounded by significant pre-Hispanic remains, the town of Andagua and the Ayo Valley present important natural and built features for investigating the extent of imperial statecraft in the area, yet the region has received no systematic archaeological attention and little academic research. This research offers a multi-scalar, long-term and comparative perspective of local occupations and cultural practices in the region during pre-Inka, Inka and Spanish rule, providing original data and research through using multiple archaeological field methods including, full coverage regional pedestrian and site-intensive surveys, systematic shovel test pits and 2x2m excavation units, and spatial mapping. Historical research will be conducted to provide insight into long-term regional processes that can be tested by archaeological evidence.
