Dissertation Research: The Tiwanaku Occupation of the Island of the Sun, Bolivia

在Alan Kolata博士的指导下，Matthew Seddon先生将为他的博士论文收集数据。他将在位于玻利维亚高原湖泊的一个岛屿上的“太阳神庙”进行考古发掘。观察和描述印加帝国的西班牙探险家注意到这是一个非常神圣的地方。之前的考古工作已经确定了这个地方的位置，并发现这个地区在至少两个以前的文化时期都有人居住。塞登先生将进行挖掘以确定这些早期职业的范围和性质。将恢复建筑和人工数据，以便与玻利维亚高地同一时期的其他遗址进行比较。在此基础上，将有可能了解在这些早期时期，该地区是否曾担任宗教功能，还是主要用于家庭用途。考古学家希望了解导致复杂社会出现的过程，并将印加作为新大陆前哥伦布文明的一个例子进行了广泛的研究。然而，在安第斯地区，印加人只是一系列复杂实体中最新的一个，玻利维亚以其之前的蒂瓦纳库社会而闻名。印加人在多大程度上“从头开始”创造了他们的文明尚不清楚，塞登先生的研究将解决这个问题。虽然太阳神庙具有宗教目的，但塞登的作品关注的不是宗教，而是社会和政治控制。在许多史前社会中，这些功能都嵌入在仪式框架中，而塞登先生研究的对象正是这些潜在的社会过程。这项工作之所以重要，有几个原因。它将为许多考古学家提供感兴趣的数据。它将为复杂社会的发展提供新的线索，并有助于培养有前途的年轻科学家。

Under the direction of Dr. Alan Kolata, Mr. Matthew Seddon will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. He will conduct archaeological excavations at the `temple to the sun` which is located on an island in highland Bolivian lake. Spanish explorers who observed and described the Inca empire noted that this was a highly sacred site. Previous archaeological work has determined the location and has also discovered that the area was inhabited during at least two previous cultural periods. Mr. Seddon will excavate to determine the extent and nature of these earlier occupations. Both architectural and artifactural data will be recovered for comparison with other sites from the same time periods in the Bolivian highlands. On this basis it will be possible to learn whether during these earlier periods the area served a religious function or whether is was occupied for primarily domestic use. Archaeologists wish to understand the processes which led the emergence of complex societies and have extensively studied the Inca as an example of a New World pre Columbian civilization. However in the Andean region the Incas were only the latest in a series of such complex entities and Bolivia is known for the Tiwanaku society which preceded it. The extent to which the Inca created their civilization `de novo` is not known and Mr. Seddon's research will address this issue. Although the temple of the sun served a religious purpose, Mr. Seddon's work focuses not on religion but on social and political control. In many prehistoric societies these functions are embedded in a ritual framework and it is these underlying social processes which are the object of Mr. Seddon's research. This work is important for several reasons. It will provide data of interest to many archaeologists. It will shed new light on the growth of complex societies and assist in the training of a promising young scientist.