Human Response To State Collapse And Social Transition

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With National Science Foundation support, Dr. Nicola Sharratt and Dr. Charles Spencer will examine the long-term impacts of violent state collapse. The breakdown of complex societies is a recurring process in the human past and present. While existing archaeological research has substantially advanced understanding of why and how states fragment, it has focused primarily on the immediate political and economic outcomes. By examining social dynamics that occurred over several centuries following the collapse of one of the earliest states in Andean South America, the Tiwanaku (AD 500-1000), this project investigates the lasting repercussions of political disintegration for social cohesion, instability, and cultural continuity. Bringing together an international team of specialists from the United States and Peru the project will provide training opportunities for American and Peruvian students, as well as data for theses and dissertations. As in many other examples of state collapse, although Tiwanaku's disintegration resulted in radical changes in political and economic organization, considerable continuity is evident in the ways that people lived their daily lives, the materials and architecture they constructed and the rituals they enacted. This continuity has been clearly demonstrated at the site of Tumilaca la Chimba, located in southern Peru. The site was first established around AD 1000 by refugees fleeing the turmoil of Tiwanaku state collapse. Previous research shows that although the site's inhabitants lived through drastic political change, they maintained Tiwanaku ways of life and cultural practices for more than two hundred years. However, around AD 1250, Tiwanaku materials and practices disappear from the site and from the region more broadly. The research will investigate the social processes that resulted in the drastic disappearance of Tiwanaku affiliated communities after several centuries of cultural continuity and resilience. Researchers will test whether the Tiwanaku affiliated population abandoned the site, was displaced by outsiders, or was assimilated into a new community. The validity of each of these explanations will be determined by characterizing the nature of the relationship between the Tiwanaku affiliated population at Tumilaca la Chimba, and the population who inhabited it after AD 1250. This will be achieved by excavating and analyzing data from the post-AD 1250 occupation that is comparable to that for the Tiwanaku affiliated community. By excavating houses and burials, investigating diet, craft production, and ritual practice researchers will determine whether the two communities shared a cultural identity. Through osteological analyses, particularly of genetically determined dental traits, researchers will examine whether the two populations were biologically related. By extensively radio-carbon dating archaeological contexts researchers will investigate whether the two populations ever co-existed at the site. Political collapse is a process that affects societies in numerous geographical, temporal, and cultural contexts. Building on existing research on the short-term impacts that socio-political disruption has on communities, this project takes a long-term perspective to investigate how populations can be affected by and respond to such turmoil for centuries.