With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Burger and his colleagues will conduct a technical analysis of pottery excavated at the archaeological site of Machu Picchu which is located in the Andes mountains of Peru. Discovered by Hiram Bingham in the early 1900s, this is one of the most spectacular Incan sites and is visited by large numbers of tourists each year. However despite it's fame and extensive excavations conducted by Bingham, it is not well understood how the site functioned and what purpose within the Incan empire it served. Through ceramic analysis Dr. Burger will address this question. He will take a sample of ceramic materials and subject them to combined scanning electron microscope (SEM) and electron microprobe examination. With the former technique he will gain insight into the manufacturing process and this will allow him to determine the degree of standardization. The latter technique will permit him to determine the elemental composition of the paste and allow Dr. Burger to infer whether it derived from one geographical source or many. On this basis he can begin to reconstruct the economic and political context in which these essential materials were distributed and produced. The Inca peoples created an empire which spread from Ecuador to Argentina and from the heights of the Andes mountains to the arid Pacific coasts. Lacking both writing and a centralized market system they were able to integrate large numbers of disparate peoples into a single political system. Archaeologists wish to understand how they were able to accomplish this and how the Incan system developed. The study of pottery in what is clearly an elite context should provide insight. In addition to the knowledge this research will provide about Incan prehistory, it is important because of the methodological contribution it will make. Although the combined SEM electron microprobe is currently used in geological studies it has not been applied an archaeological contexts. If it is successful it may greatly simplify ceramic analysts' work. Dr. Burger's research constitutes a first practical test and the methodological implications are considerable.
