Doctoral Dissertation Research: Food Production, Ritual, and Community Organization at Ancient Hualcayan (Ancash, Peru)

范德比尔特大学的丽贝卡·布里亚将与秘鲁同事合作，研究在地区间宗教和政治网络衰落后，人们如何构成新的社区。以前的学术研究表明，在政治衰落和复兴时期，人们如何利用仪式表演来建立新的社区联系。经济研究还表明，新的粮食生产制度如何改变社区互动。在这些研究的基础上，本研究将注意力集中在这些仪式和经济实践之间鲜为人知的联系上，以便扩大我们对社区建立和组织的复杂条件、材料和过程的理解。特别是，它研究了在安第斯史前社会转型的关键过程中，仪式和食物生产是如何变化的，其特征是在地平线早期(公元前900-公元前1年)广泛传播的查文宗教和政治网络的消亡。中期早期(公元前1-600年)地方化农牧群落的兴起。考古学是一门研究过去人类社会材料和实践的长期变化的学科，特别适合研究这种社区再生的过程。总的来说，这项研究较少关注经济适应，而更多地关注人们塑造环境和建立社区的宗教价值观和政治动机，从而为粮食生产和社区形成提供了新的视角。该项目还将为人类学研究和当代政治中的一个重要主题提供见解：经历广泛的政治和宗教变革的人们如何建立新的社会身份和定义新类型的社区。这项研究有可能加深对当今世界许多地区正在发生的政治变化的理解。丽贝卡·布里亚和她的合作者将调查古代社区如何在地区政治衰落时期获得政治和经济自治，并重组当地的社会联系，特别是通过建立新的粮食生产制度和新类型的仪式表演。这项研究将分析从瓦勒坎的仪式背景中挖掘出来的食物残骸，这是一处考古遗址，在秘鲁安卡姆的查文衰落和雷凯出现期间一直被占据。该项目假设，社区组织的转变是以仪式和食物生产的变化为基础的，以前，仪式和食物生产支持精英在华金的查韦恩寺庙从事仪式活动，然后为一个植根于企业集体仪式和农业管理的新的Recuay社区奠定了基础。为了验证这一假设，该项目将分析和比较大型植物学、植硅体和淀粉，以及来自Chavín寺庙和Recuay仪式院落的动物遗骸，以及空间上嵌入到农业梯田系统中的墓穴，并通过14C方法确定这些背景的日期。这份分析将记录瓦勒坎人通过强化、多样化和仪式化的食物生产将他们的查韦恩寺庙遗址转变为Recuay社区的程度，并将审查新成立的Recuay企业集团是否以及如何通过仪式食物准备和消费实践而与众不同。这项研究将通过国际科学合作加强秘鲁和美国之间的知识和文化联系，研究结果将通过同行评议的出版物和博物馆装置向公众展示。

Rebecca Bria of Vanderbilt University will collaborate with Peruvian colleagues to study how people constitute new communities following the decline of interregional religious and political networks. Previous scholarship has shown how, during periods of political decline and regeneration, people use ritual performance to establish new community affiliations. Economic studies have also shown how new food production regimes transform community interaction. Building on and expanding these studies, this research focuses attention on the poorly understood links between these ritual and economic practices in order to broaden our understanding of the complex conditions, materials, and processes through which communities are established and organized. In particular, it studies how ritual and food production changed during a pivotal process of social transformation in Andean prehistory, characterized by the demise of the widespread Chavín religion and political network during the Early Horizon (900-1 B.C.E.) and the rise of localized Recuay agro-pastoral communities in the Early Intermediate Period (1-600 C.E.). Archaeology, a discipline that examines the long-term changes in materials and practices of past human societies, is particularly well suited to study this process of community regeneration. Broadly, the study contributes new perspectives on food production and community formation by focusing less on economic adaptation and more on the religious values and political motivations through which people shaped their environment and built a community. The project will also contribute insights to an important topic in anthropological research and contemporary politics: how people undergoing extensive political and religious change establish new social identities and define new kinds of community. The research has the potential to uncrease understanding of political changes which are occurring in many regions of the world today.Rebecca Bria and her collaborators will investigate how ancient communities gained political and economic autonomy and reorganized local social affiliations during periods of regional political decline, particularly by establishing new food production regimes and new types of ritual performances. The study will analyze food remains excavated from ritual contexts at Hualcayán, an archaeological site that was continuously occupied during the period of Chavín decline and Recuay emergence in Ancash, Peru. The project hypothesizes that a transfor¬mation in community organization was predicated upon changes in ritual and food production, which had previously supported elites engaged in ritual activities at Hualcayán's Chavín temple and then provided the foundation for a new Recuay community rooted in corporate group rituals and agricultural management. To test the hypothesis, the project will analyze and compare macrobotanical, phytolith and starch, and faunal remains from the Chavín temple and from Recuay ritual compounds and tombs that are spatially embedded into a system of agricultural terraces, as well as date these contexts by 14C means. This analysis will document the degree to which people at Hualcayán transformed their Chavín temple site into a Recuay community by intensifying, diversifying, and ritualizing food production and will examine whether and how newly formed Recuay corporate groups were distinguished by ritual food preparation and consumption practices. The research will strengthen intellectual and cultural ties between Peru and the United States through an international scientific collaboration, and the results will be presented to the public in peer-reviewed publications and museum installations.