Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Grant: Ritual Practices and the Emergence of Urbanism: Wari Social Strategies, AD 600-1000, Ayacucho, Peru

艾米·格罗洛在她的顾问威廉·H·伊斯贝尔博士的指导下，将对公元600-1000年间繁荣于秘鲁中部安第斯山脉的瓦里帝国早期城市的仪式活动进行研究。比印加早500年，瓦里人是世界上这一地区第一个拥有由行政中心管理的影响深远的殖民地的扩张群体。标准化的建筑和独特的陶瓷风格承载着神灵和神话中的生物形象，这是瓦里中心的标志，这些中心南至玻利维亚，北至厄瓜多尔--跨越了今天的秘鲁。在没有书面语言和穿越从沙漠海岸到崎岖高地的极端地形的情况下，瓦里国的崛起一直是安第斯学者争论的主题。最新的理论认为，瓦里的扩张是军事力量、宗教皈依和人民从首都重新安置来统治殖民地的综合因素。格罗洛的研究将考察这段时间内瓦里中心地带靠近今天的秘鲁阿亚库乔的三个地点的宗教祭祀活动：首都瓦里；二级城市孔乔帕塔；以及可以追溯到瓦里统治之前的定居点--阿温普乔。这项研究将追踪城镇化兴起和瓦日邦政权出现期间祭祀仪式实践的变化，以更好地理解宗教在这些更大的社会和政治变化中的作用。遗址的组合提供了一个大的地理区域的视角，并提供了在向城市生活过渡期间看到时间变化的可能性；为复杂社会的崛起和城市化的更大辩论贡献了来自一个重要的早期南美帝国的数据。当前的考古学术强调城市对国家等更大政治复杂性的形成的重要性。格罗洛的研究考察了人们如何利用仪式和宗教来协商自己在一个新兴国家和城市中的地位。例如，城市居民是否采用了支持国家意识形态的新仪式；试图通过选择加入一个日益分层的国家权力来改善他们的生活？或者，在住宅中发现的祭祀仪式是否代表着对新兴国家权力和日益加剧的城市环境不平等的挑战？虽然政府和宗教机构正在结盟，但人们可能试图通过广泛的家庭仪式实践来减轻对神圣权威的垄断。仪式是审查WARI理事机构需要解决的持续紧张局势的重要场所，并强调了权力不断谈判的程度。格罗洛女士的研究结果将为首都地区提供可靠的经验数据，随后研究瓦里省遗址的学者可以使用这些数据。除了对社会科学的贡献，该项目还为研究生格罗洛提供了运行大型实验室分析的经验，并为秘鲁阿亚库乔当地大学的本科生助理提供了大量培训机会，阿亚库乔是秘鲁最贫困的地区之一。

Amy Groleau, with the supervision of her advisor Dr. William H. Isbell, will undertake a study of ritual activity in the earliest cities of the Wari Empire that flourished in the central Andes of Peru from AD 600-1000. Pre-dating the Inca by 500 years, Wari was the first expansive group in this area of the world that had far-reaching colonies governed by administrative centers. Standardized architecture and distinctive ceramic styles bearing images of deities and mythical creatures are the hallmark of Wari centers, which have been found as far south as Bolivia and north to Ecuador--spanning the length of present-day Peru. Without the benefit of a written language and traversing landscape extremes from the desert coast to the rugged highlands, the rise of the Wari state has been a subject of debate among Andean scholars. It has most recently been theorized that Wari expansion was facilitated by a combination of military might, religious conversion, and relocation of people from the capital to govern the colonies. Ms. Groleau's study will examine religious ritual offerings during this time period at three sites in the Wari heartland near present-day Ayacucho, Peru: the capital site of Wari; Conchopata, a secondary city; and Ñawinpukyo, a settlement dating to the period directly preceding Wari dominance. This study will track changes in ritual offering practice during the rise of urbanism and the emergence of Wari state power to provide a better understanding of the role of religion in these larger social and political changes. The combination of sites provides the perspective of a large geographical area and offers the possibility of seeing change through time during the transition to urban living; contributing data from an important and early South American empire to the larger debates of the rise of complex societies and urbanization. Current archaeological scholarship emphasizes the importance of cities to the formation of greater political complexity such as states. Ms. Groleau's research examines how people were using ritual and religion to negotiate their place within an emerging state and city. For example, were city residents adopting new rituals supportive of state ideologies; attempting to better their lives by opting into an increasingly stratified state power? Or do ritual offerings found in residences represent a challenge both to emerging state power and to increasing inequalities of the urban environment? While governmental and religious institutions were aligning, people may have sought to mitigate the monopoly on divine authority through widespread household ritual practice. Ritual is an important locus for examining ongoing tensions that needed to be addressed by Wari governing bodies and underscores the extent to which power was constantly negotiated. Ms. Groleau's results will provide robust empirical data for the capital region which can then be used by scholars working on Wari provincial sites. Beyond the contribution to social science, this project provides experience in running a large laboratory analysis for the graduate student, Groleau, and substantial training opportunities for undergraduate assistants from the local university in Ayacucho, Peru; one of the more impoverished regions of the country.