Dissertation Research: Imperial Political Economy and Resource Exploitation in the Cotahuasi Valley, Peru

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Under the direction of Dr. Katharina Schreiber, Mr. Justin Jennings will collect data for his doctoral dissertation. Mr. Jennings has conducted preliminary archaeological survey in the Cotahuasi Valley located in the Andes Mountains in southern Peru and with National Science Foundation support he will return for an intensive twelve month field season. While very remote and difficult of access, the valley's rich mineral resources which include gold, silver and rock salt make it an important location and the Spanish as well as preceding empires incorporated the region into their political systems. The goal of Mr. Jennings research is to compare the organization of Cotahuasi during three cultural periods. The region was first a part of the Wari empire which had its core in the southern Peruvian highlands. After Wari's eclipse the Valley was ruled by the Inca and finally by the Spanish in early historic times. "Empires" by definition consist of a ruling core which through a combination of force and other means subjugate other ethnic groups to bring them under centralized rule. The methods of control and means for incorporation may vary greatly. In some instances subjugation was primarily through tightly organized trade, in others through a system of indirect rule and in others through direct local oversight and military force. Through comparison of various methods in one region during three time periods it should be possible to gain insight into the nature of decision making within empires and the organizational constraints imposed by geographic distance and cultural perspective.Mr. Jennings has constructed a model which describes the material correlates likely to accompany differing methods of control and will determine through field research which most closely fits the data for each time period. He will conduct a large scale surface survey and will use remains of buildings and other features, their location and artifactual evidence - mostly ceramics - associated with them to reconstruct settlement patterns for each period. In particular he will look for intrusive styles which denote the presence of outsiders. He will also attempt to reconstruct the organization of resource extraction to determine whether this changes in intensity over time. This research is important for several reasons. It is cross cultural in nature and will provide an opportunity to compare, in a controlled geographic context, European and non-European systems of political and economic organization. It will provide archaeological data from a poorly known part of South America which will be of interest to many archaeologists. It will also assist in training a promising young scientist.