Post-Collapse Community and Social Hierarchy in the Titicaca Basin, Peru: Survey and Excavation at Machu Llacta

Drs。伊丽莎白·阿库什和。aim<s:1> e Plourde和他的美国和秘鲁同事将利用美国国家科学基金会的资助，在秘鲁南部的的的喀喀湖盆地进行三个季节的考古调查和挖掘，该盆地以马丘拉克塔（Machu Llaqta）的大山顶城为中心。该项目旨在帮助理解在国家崩溃后的时期，政治网络和社会等级是如何重新制定的。的的喀喀湖盆地形成了前哥伦布时期政治发展的主要地点，在蒂瓦纳库州形成了一系列早期复杂的社会。公元1000年蒂瓦纳库崩溃后，随之而来的是长期干旱、政治分裂以及种族间和种族内部激烈冲突的动荡时期。在此期间，马丘拉克塔和该地区的其他防御地点定居下来。的的喀喀湖盆地的人们抛弃了数千年的仪式建筑、宗教肖像和精英特权传统，并发展了新的社会秩序和信仰方式。在后来的殖民记录中，该地区被描述为科拉斯的“艾马拉王国”的故乡——一个由强大的军阀统治的王国，可能是世袭的。然而，Arkush和其他人之前的研究结果表明，一个更加分散的社会现实是松散的地区联盟和相当微妙的地位差别。这种情况提出了一些基本问题，即如何维持跨空间的政治网络，以及如何在严重的社会混乱和困难时期表达或最小化地位和集中领导。马丘拉克塔的地表建筑保存完好，揭示了一个人口密集的中心，其内部组织程度在其他科拉遗址中是无与伦比的。一千多个家庭或存储结构排列在小型住宅小区的天井周围，围绕几条长巷组织，整体由悬崖和巨大的防御墙保护。该项目旨在通过揭示国内生产和消费、工艺、贸易、仪式活动、举办宴会以及在整个基地及其附近卫星区域获得有价值商品的差异或相似性，来定义以该基地为中心的社会群体是如何构建的。一项全面的调查将识别、确定日期、绘制地图，并收集附近较早和同时期遗址的地表文物。随后，研究人员将在现场和附近的三个较小的地点进行广泛的暴露挖掘和较小的有针对性的挖掘。对所得材料的分析应该能阐明社会差异在这里是如何起作用的。该项目的知识价值不仅在于澄清Colla社会政治复杂性的问题，而且还在于解决如何在应对重大社会危机时重新设计社会和等级制度的理论问题。该项目更广泛的影响包括为本科生和研究生提供培训和研究机会；与秘鲁学者的国际合作，以及与秘鲁贫困地区的当地工人的就业和技能分享；促进负责任的旅游业和当地对考古遗址的尊重。

Drs. Elizabeth Arkush and. Aimée Plourde, and American and Peruvian colleagues will use National Science Foundation support for three field seasons of archaeological survey and excavation in the Lake Titicaca Basin of southern Peru, centered on the large hilltop walled town of Machu Llaqta. The project is designed to contribute to an understanding of how political networks and social hierarchies are reformulated in the periods following state collapse. The Lake Titicaca Basin formed a major locus of pre-Columbian political development, hosting a series of early complex societies that culminated in the state of Tiwanaku. After Tiwanaku's collapse ca. AD 1000, there ensued a tumultuous period of extended drought, political fragmentation, and intense inter- and intra-ethnic conflict. During this time, Machu Llaqta and other defensive sites in the region were settled. People in the Titicaca Basin discarded millennium-long traditions of ceremonial architecture, religious iconography, and elite privilege, and developed new ways of ordering society and beliefs. The area is described in later colonial accounts as the home of the "Aymara kingdom" of the Collas - a realm ruled by a powerful warlord with a possibly hereditary position. However, the results of previous research by Arkush and others suggest a more decentralized social reality of loose regional confederacies and rather subtle status distinctions. This scenario raises basic questions about how political networks across space are maintained and how status and centralized leadership are expressed or minimized in times of severe social disruption and hardship. The surface architecture at Machu Llaqta is well-preserved, and reveals a densely populated center with a degree of internal organization unparalleled at other Colla sites. Over a thousand domestic or storage structures are arrayed around patios in small residential compounds, organized around a few long alleyways, the whole protected by cliffs and massive defensive walls. This project aims to define how the social group centered at this site was structured by uncovering difference or similarity in domestic production and consumption, craft, trade, ritual activity, the hosting of feasts, and access to valued goods in residential areas across the site and its nearby satellites. A full-coverage survey will identify, date, map, and collect surface artifacts from earlier and contemporaneous sites in the vicinity. Subsequently, the researchers will conduct both broad exposure excavations and smaller targeted excavations in a sample of domestic compounds at the site and at three smaller sites in the vicinity. Analysis of the resulting materials should illuminate how social difference worked here.The intellectual merit of the project lies not only in clarifying the problem of Colla sociopolitical complexity, but also in addressing the theoretical issue of how societies and hierarchies are reworked in response to major social crisis. The project's broader impacts include training and research opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students; international collaboration with Peruvian scholars, and the employment and sharing of skills with local workers in an impoverished part of Peru; and the promotion of responsible tourism and local respect for archaeological sites.