Dissertation Research: Household and Community Organizationof a Formative Period Bolivian Settlement

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Under the direction of Dr. Marc Bermann, MS Courtney Rose will collect data for her doctoral dissertation. She will conduct surface survey and excavation at the archaeological site of La Barca which is located in the La Joya region of highland Bolivia. The site dates to the Wankarani period (1500 BC - Ad 400) and consists of a mound approximately 6 meters high and 90 meters in diameter. Architectural structures and features dating from the final phase of occupation appear undisturbed and remain visible on the surface of the site. Thus they can be exposed without deep excavation. The culture history of highland Bolivia reflects a process which occurred in many parts of the world. During the Archaic period people lived in small groups and subsisted by hunting and gathering. In Wankarani times a more settled village way of life, based on agriculture and llama pastoralism developed. MS Rose wishes to understand the nature of the social process which accompanied this subsistence change. Hunters and gathers are egalitarian. They share food, do not horde within the family and exhibit a communal mode of organization. On the basis of archaeological work in the Andean region, it appears that greater variability characterized the succeeding agriculturists and pastoralists. Settlement organization and the distribution of material remains indicate that some cultures maintained this communal mode while in others a family and lineage based system appeared. Under this individual social units stored food and engaged in relatively little sharing beyond the family. Archaeologists have looked for a deeper pattern to explain this variability and have focused on differences in the distribution, variability and predictability in food resources. MS Rose will address this question in the highland Bolivian environment. She will conduct a surface survey of La Barca and on this basis select units for broad scale excavation. She will reconstruct the village plan, map storage facilities to determine if these occur in communal or family contexts and examine the distribution of material remains. On these bases social and economic reconstruction should be possible. This research is important because it will shed new light on the social processes which accompanied the Neolithic Revolution and the development of a settled village way of life. It will provide important data for a relatively unknown period in the Andes and it will assist in training a promising young scientist.