Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Long Distance Trade and Social Complexity

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Mr. Christopher Schwartz will conduct research to examine how people draw on networks of distant interaction and exchange in the process of placemaking, and how that process changes over time. The archaeological record offers particularly relevant insight into this topic through its ability to trace the developmental trajectories of settlements and changes in interaction networks over time. This research primarily focuses on one object, the scarlet macaw (Ara macao), and its influence far outside of its endemic homeland. This dissertation project will employ a novel framework, combining biogeochemical methods with a material culture theoretical perspective to explore how past people acquired, treated, and deposited ritually significant, non-local objects at three regional centers in the past. More broadly, this project will improve anthropological understandings of the extent to which societies separated by great distances interacted in ways that had transformative local influences - a form of pre-modern globalization. Additionally, this project will enhance relationships and infrastructure for research by creating research partnerships amongst Arizona State University, the Hopi Tribe, the Museum of Northern Arizona, and the National Park Service. Because this project directly studies sacred animal remains and addresses questions of relevance to the Hopi community, this project was formulated in direct consultation with the Hopi Cultural Preservation Office.This dissertation research will examine several dimensions of scarlet macaws that brought them significance in the pre-Hispanic US Southwest and Mexican Northwest (SW/NW). Despite the distant natural habitat of scarlet macaws, which is hundreds of kilometers to the south in southern Mexico and Central America, their importation, exchange, and sacrifice appear to have played integral roles in the establishment of SW/NW regional centers from 900-1450 AD. This time period saw large-scale migration, rapid population aggregation, and an expansion of long-distance exchange relations in regional centers at Pueblo Bonito (900-1150 CE) in northeastern New Mexico, Wupatki (1085-1220 AD) in north-central Arizona, and Paquim (1200-1450 AD) in northwestern Chihuahua. Radiogenic strontium isotope analysis of scarlet macaw skeletal tissue and comparative contextual analyses applied through a material histories framework will be used to (1) discern whether scarlet macaws discovered in the SW/NW were imported from Mesoamerica or raised locally, (2) characterize the treatment and deposition of scarlet macaws at Pueblo Bonito, Wupatki, and Paquim, and (3) identify patterns of continuity or change in acquisition, treatment, and deposition of scarlet macaws over time.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.