Collaborative Research: Processes Which Guide Imperial Emergence

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The goal of this project is to gain insight into the development of past imperial society. In this collaborative project researchers examine the emergence of one such imperial formation at an archaeological site that saw the transformation from an independent city-state into a tributary city. The expansion of ancient territorial empires has historically resulted in profound changes to the material culture and daily life of such settlements, regardless of their resistance to imperial incorporation. Existing research has predominantly focused on the evidence from the pre- and post-imperial control periods in such locations. However, pre-imperial traces of socio-political organization were often purposely erased or altered with the arrival of new ideologies and strategies of empire building. This makes it difficult to understand how societies adapted or resisted to imperial incorporation. Archaeology can provide insight by looking at contexts of continuous cultural practices like places of worship, rituals, and public activities that remained undisrupted, and thus, see variations on cultural traditions and learn how people responded to imposing external ideologies and governing in the past. This research provides insights into how local ethnicities maintained, modified, or altered their traditions in the service of new political systems are pertinent for comprehending how indigenous communities respond to contemporary foreign global expansions. The team generates new comparative methods for the study of empire expansion while strengthening the relationship between current local and indigenous communities and their archaeological heritage through a collaborative research process including interpretation, community dissemination, and efforts at site conservation as well as training opportunities for archaeology students.The team will conduct a multi-year effort focused on excavation of five public religious and funerary complexes such as pyramid-plaza compounds dating to the critical window of empire formation using mortuary analyses, precise mapping with LiDAR, GPS, and photogrammetry, and several dating methods including C14, archaeomagnetism, and bone collagen. Combining excavation, mapping and lab analyses will permit tighter chronology for the site and bring new lines of evidence to understand how the empire first developed a core-region and then expanded outwards.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.