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

在艾伦·科拉塔博士的指导下，马修·塞登先生将为他的博士论文收集数据。他将对位于玻利维亚湖高原上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，这是一个高度神圣的地方。之前的考古工作已经确定了地点，并发现该地区至少在之前的两个文化时期有人居住。塞登将进行挖掘，以确定这些早期占领的范围和性质。将恢复建筑和手工艺品数据，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，该地区是否具有宗教功能，或者是否主要为家庭用途而被占领。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，印加只是一系列这类复杂实体中最新的一个，玻利维亚以其之前的提瓦纳库社会而闻名。印加人在多大程度上创造了他们的新文明尚不得而知，塞登先生的研究将解决这个问题。尽管太阳神庙服务于宗教目的，但塞登的工作重点不是宗教，而是社会和政治控制。在许多史前社会中，这些功能被嵌入到一个仪式框架中，而塞登先生的研究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。它将提供许多考古学家感兴趣的数据。它将为复杂社会的成长提供新的线索，并有助于培养一位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.