Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: The Role Of Ritual Integration In Augmenting State Level Solidarity

范德比尔特大学的Carla Hernández Garavito将与秘鲁的同事一起研究当地社区和不断扩大的帝国政治制度之间熟悉的社会文化做法如何影响15至16世纪印加帝国中相互可读的社会政治秩序的发展。易读性的概念是指一个连续的政治过程，在这个过程中，国家使用他们和他们的臣民之间熟悉的习语来对当地人民施加政治和经济控制。易读性可能会为国家服务，作为政治征服的工具，但它也可能会加强共享的习语，这些习语被当地社区为了自己的利益而利用。与现代社会一样，过去的社会受制于全球政治进程，但人类学对古代和现代帝国内部运作的理解存在越来越大的差距，使得过去的地方/全球关系变成了直接/间接控制的简化二分法。通过跨学科的考古学和历史学方法，本研究将调查皇室统治规则谈判和建立的关键时期。这个项目极大地贡献和扩展了当前的学术：1.通过使用易读性的概念来分析主体群体塑造帝国主义政治和经济进程的具体手段；2.将单一的帝国战略描述为一个历时的过程，从它在当地的萌芽到帝国和地方做法之间的谈判；3.通过将这项研究置于国家和地方互动的全球问题中。埃尔南德斯夫人和她的研究团队将利用考古发掘、测绘、档案研究和专门的材料分析，调查公共仪式和地点作为印加帝国和秘鲁安第斯山脉华罗基里地区当地社区互动的关键习语所起的作用。在一百年的时间里，印加人创建了美洲最大的帝国，在鼎盛时期扩展到南美洲西部的90.6万平方公里，并编织了一个种族多样性的拼凑。通过对包含当地和印加标准公共空间的两个遗址进行有针对性的挖掘，并通过跨学科的方法，该项目将揭示一种微妙的霸权互动方式，这种方式有助于形成印加帝国主义和国家强加的不同物质特征。该项目将为美国和秘鲁的考古和历史专业学生提供合作教育和培训机会，并将促进与当地社区成员和秘鲁学术机构的合作。这项研究直接关系到促进批判性理解帝国政策如何创造条件，以纳入和保持相互可读的地方/国家做法，以及地方形式如何帮助塑造国家政治。

Carla Hernández Garavito, of Vanderbilt University, along with colleagues in Peru, will undertake research on how familiar sociocultural practices between local communities and expanding imperial political systems impacted the development of mutually legible socio-political orders in the 15th-16th century Inca Empire. The concept of legibility refers to a continuous political process, in which states use familiar idioms between them and their subjects to exert political and economic control over local populations. Legibility may serve the state as a tool of political subjugation, but it also may reinforce shared idioms in ways that were leveraged by local communities for their own interests. As with modern societies, past ones were subject to processes of global politics, yet the growing gap in the anthropological understanding of the inner workings of ancient and modern empires has rendered local/global relationships in the past into a simplified dichotomy of direct/indirect control. Through an interdisciplinary archaeological and historical approach, this research will investigate the critical period when the rules of imperial control were negotiated and established. This project significantly contributes and expands currently scholarship: 1. by using the concept of legibility to analyze the specific means through which subject groups shape political and economic processes of imperialism; 2. in characterizing a single imperial strategy as a diachronic process, from its local inception to negotiation between imperial and local practices; 3. by situating this research within global issues of state and local interaction. Mrs. Hernández and her research team will use archaeological excavation, mapping, archival research, and specialized material analyses, to investigate the role of public ritual and places as critical idioms of interaction between the Inka Empire and the local community in the Huarochirí region in the Peruvian Andes. Over the course of a hundred years, the Inka created the largest empire in the Americas, extending at its height over 906,000 km2 of western South America and weaving together a patchwork of ethnic diversity. Through targeted excavations in two sites containing both local and Inka standard public spaces and through an interdisciplinary methodology, this project will reveal a subtle means of hegemonic interaction that helped to shape Inka imperialism and the diverse material signatures of state imposition. This project will offer collaborative education and training opportunities for U.S. and Peruvian archaeology and history students, and will promote collaboration with local community members and Peruvian academic institutions. This research is of direct relevance to foster a critical understanding of how imperial policies created the conditions for incorporating and maintaining mutually legible local/state practices and how local forms helped to shape state politics.