Doctoral Dissertation Research Award: Agrarian Labor and Colonialism

雷蒙德·亨特（Raymond Hunter）将与秘鲁的同事一起，通过调查殖民主义下的劳资关系，研究商业化经济的发展。虽然以前有许多关于殖民地经济制度发展的研究，但以前的研究很少关注农业工人在发展经济制度中的创造性作用。本项目将提供另一种视角，阐明农业工人的决策如何影响新兴经济体的结构。这些过程会持续很长一段时间，通常会持续几个世纪。考古学是了解长时间内出现的变化的理想工具，而且还可以为可能没有记录在档案中的人口行为提供重要的见解。该项目通过开发一个概念性框架来评估殖民主义下的农业劳动制度，为人类学理论做出了贡献。在此过程中，该项目与新兴的人类学和考古学文献相结合，探讨了全球系统是如何被非精英参与者创造和塑造的。该研究将考察最终负责农业生产的农业劳动者如何与新兴市场接触，通过新兴市场，他们的劳动产品得以分散。这项工作将在秘鲁的库斯科地区进行，该地区是安第斯殖民时期（公元1532-1824年）农业生产和经济发展的关键纽带。在库斯科，大量的农产品被生产出来，供应新兴矿业城镇的市场。这种生产涉及新引进的产品和外国形式的劳工组织，这是殖民地经济出现的核心。研究小组将采用各种考古方法来阐明农业工人在殖民时期是如何适应这些不断变化的条件的。通过将挖掘数据与现有湖芯数据相结合，研究将评估这一过渡时期土地利用、环境变化、生产和消费的转变模式。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Raymond Hunter will work alongside colleagues in Peru to study the development of commercialized economies by interrogating labor relations under colonialism. While there have been many previous studies of the development of colonial economic systems, prior research has given less attention to the creative role of agrarian workers in developing economic systems. This project will provide an alternative perspective by clarifying how the decisions of agricultural workers impact the structure of emerging economies. These processes play out over long periods of time - frequently over centuries. Archaeology is ideal to understand changes that emerge over extended periods of time, and further, can provide important insight on the actions of populations that may not be recorded in archives. The project contributes to anthropological theory by developing a conceptual framework to evaluate agrarian labor regimes under colonialism. In doing so, the project engages with an emerging body of anthropological and archaeological literature that explores how global systems are created and shaped by non-elite actors.The research will examine how the agrarian laborers ultimately responsible for agricultural production engaged with the emerging markets through which the product of their labor was dispersed. The work will be conducted in the Cusco region of Peru, a critical nexus of agricultural production and economic development during the Andean Colonial Period (1532-1824 A.D). In Cusco, large quantities of agricultural goods were produced to supply markets in burgeoning mining towns. This production involved newly introduced products and foreign forms of labor organization that were central to the emergence of the colonial economy. The research team will employ a variety of archaeological methods to clarify how agrarian workers negotiated these shifting conditions over the course of the Colonial Period. By combining data from excavations with extant data from a lake core the research will assess shifting patterns of land use, environmental change, production, and consumption during this period of transition.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.