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

伊丽莎白·阿库什博士和。Amée Plourde以及美国和秘鲁的同事将利用国家科学基金会的支持，在秘鲁南部的喀喀湖盆地进行三个实地考古调查和挖掘，中心是山顶上有围墙的大镇马丘拉克塔。该项目旨在帮助理解政治网络和社会等级制度在国家崩溃后的几个时期是如何重新制定的。喀喀湖盆地形成了前哥伦比亚政治发展的一个主要中心，容纳了一系列早期复杂的社会，最终在提瓦纳库州达到顶峰。约在公元1000年，提瓦纳库崩溃后，出现了一段长期干旱、政治分裂以及种族间和种族间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工地得到了定居。提提卡卡盆地的人们摒弃了数千年来的礼仪建筑、宗教肖像和精英特权的传统，发展了新的社会秩序和信仰方式。在后来的殖民描述中，该地区被描述为科拉斯的“艾马拉王国”的故乡--一个由一个强大的军阀统治的王国，可能具有世袭地位。然而，阿尔库什和其他人之前的研究结果表明，一个更分散的社会现实是松散的地区邦联和相当微妙的地位差异。这一设想提出了一些基本问题，即在严重的社会动荡和困难时期，如何维持整个空间的政治网络，以及如何表达或尽量减少地位和中央领导。马丘拉克塔的表面建筑保存完好，揭示了一个人口稠密的中心，其内部组织程度是其他科拉遗址所无法比拟的。一千多座住宅或仓储建筑排列在小型住宅区的庭院周围，围绕着几条长长的胡同，整个建筑由悬崖和巨大的防御墙保护。该项目旨在通过揭示整个遗址及其附近卫星在国内生产和消费、手工艺、贸易、仪式活动、举办宴会以及在居民区获得贵重物品方面的差异或相似之处，确定以该遗址为中心的社会群体是如何构成的。一项全面的调查将识别、确定日期、绘制地图并收集附近早期和同时代遗址的地表文物。随后，研究人员将在现场和附近三个较小的地点进行广泛曝光的挖掘和较小规模的有针对性的挖掘。对结果材料的分析应该阐明社会差异是如何在这里发挥作用的。该项目的学术价值不仅在于澄清科拉社会政治复杂性的问题，而且还在于解决如何重塑社会和等级制度以应对重大社会危机的理论问题。该项目的更广泛影响包括：为本科生和研究生提供培训和研究机会；与秘鲁学者开展国际合作；在秘鲁贫困地区与当地工人就业和分享技能；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.