Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ritual and Status: Mortuary Display at the Household Level at the Middle Horizon Site of Conchopata

古代安第斯帝国是通讯恐龙；信息和决策只能以人类最快的速度传播，而且安第斯人不懂书写。由于缺乏同时期欧洲或亚洲国家的管理技术，安第斯山脉的本土帝国被迫发展另一种治国方式和其他原则，以整合其臣民。长期以来，根据西班牙人对印卡帝国的目击者描述，考古学家一直怀疑，前西班牙人治国之道的关键综合机制之一是政治上重要人物的精心殡葬仪式。在印卡帝国，精心保存的已故统治者的尸体是王朝继承和政治连续性的物质象征。通过定期的仪式和精美的陵墓，木乃伊成为政治合法化和帝国权威信息的公共交流场所。虽然死者在印卡人治国之道中的作用已经得到了很好的研究，但在早期的安第斯帝国，比如瓦里帝国，人们对这个话题的了解要少得多；在某种程度上是印卡人的先行者，印卡人在公元400年到800年间统治了高地。在马克·伯曼博士的指导下，夏琳·米利肯女士的博士论文项目将对秘鲁的孔乔帕塔遗址进行调查。在鼎盛时期，孔丘帕塔是瓦里帝国（公元600-1000年）的二级中心，由住宅区、公共广场、陶器作坊、寺庙和专门的殡仪馆组成。挖掘将集中在与两个殡仪馆建筑群相关的居住环境，研究将验证这些殡仪馆建筑群是由孔丘帕塔精英用来崇拜重要祖先的假设。孔乔帕塔是一个特别好的研究地点，因为已经发现了几个完整的太平间结构；通常这类设施在很久以前就被抢劫或摧毁了。该项目将首次调查丧葬活动在瓦里政治治国方术中的潜在作用，作为一种本地手段，在没有文化的非西方人口中建立和表达权威。

Ancient Andean empires were communications dinosaurs; information and decision-making traveled only as fast as a human could, and the Andean peoples did not know writing. Lacking the administrative technology of contemporaneous European or Asian states, the native empires of the Andes were forced to develop alternative modes of statecraft, and other principles to integrate their subject populations. Archaeologists have long suspected, based on Spanish eyewitness accounts of the Inka empire, that one of the crucial integrative mechanisms of prehispanic statecraft was the elaborate mortuary practices of the politically important. In the Inka empire, the carefully kept bodies of deceased rulers served as material symbols of dynastic succession and political continuity. Through periodic rituals andfine mausoleums mummies were the setting for public communication of messages of political legitimization and imperial authority. While the role of the dead in Inka statecraft has been well studied, much less is known about this topic in early Andean empires, such as the Wari; in some ways a fore-runner of the Inka that dominated the highlands between AD 400 and 800. Ms. Charlene Milliken's doctoral dissertation project, conducted under the direction of Dr. Marc Bermann, will investigate the site of Conchopata, Peru. At its height, Conchopata was a secondary center of the Wari empire (A.D. 600-1000) and consisted of residential zones, public plazas, pottery workshops, temples, and specialized mortuary complexes. Excavation will center on residential contexts associated with two mortuary complexes, and research will test the hypothesis that these mortuary complexes were used by Conchopata elites in the veneration of important ancestors. Conchopata is a particularly good location for this research because several intact mortuary structures have been uncovered; normally these kinds of facilities were looted or destroyed long ago. This project will provide the first investigation of the potential role of mortuary activity in Wari political statecraft as one native means by which authority is constructed and expressed in non-literate, non-Western populations.