Doctoral Dissertation Research: Sources of Power and the Development of Sociopolitical Complexity in Malagana, Southwestern Colombia

在罗伯特·d·德伦南博士的监督下，赫尔南多·吉拉尔多将在哥伦比亚西南部考卡河谷的马拉加纳遗址进行密集的地表收集和试验挖掘项目。考卡山谷社会最早的书面文件可以追溯到16世纪，描述了富有而强大的酋长领导着小的地区政治，彼此之间发生激烈的冲突。这些历史资料对冲突和战争在早期复杂社会中的作用有了很大的概括。然而，关于考卡山谷社会的发展轨迹或主要权力基础的直接考古文献很少。因此，人们对造成早期西班牙征服者所描述的情况的社会力量知之甚少。在马拉加纳遗址出土的墓葬中经常有极其精致的黄金、陶瓷和其他材料的祭品，这些通常被视为社区精英积累大量财富的证据。在一个异常明显的冲突暗示中，该遗址被壕沟和堤防所包围，可能是为了防御目的。这项研究很重要，因为它将有助于理解社会不平等的形成和维持以及社会权力的本质。马拉加纳所展示的社会复杂程度在当今发展中国家的许多地区都得到了复制，通过对一个考古案例的研究，可以获得重要的见解。Giraldo将系统地收集与Malagana墓地和沟渠特征相关的密集居住区表面上可用的文物。对这些文物的分析将使他能够评估不同家庭财产的性质和价格的差异，以及在不同地方进行的仪式和生产活动的性质和强度的差异。他绘制的居住区地图将描绘出它与可能的防御墙之间的关系，并有助于确定这是否真的是它的功能。这些信息将使我们有可能评估考卡山谷社会中几种潜在社会权力来源的重要性，包括基于农业盈余的财富积累，对专业工艺生产的控制，参与长距离的贵重物品交换网络，战争中的领导地位，以及对信仰系统的操纵。马拉加纳遗址提供了一个绝佳的机会，让我们进一步了解早期领导人获得和使用社会和政治权力的方式，以及这些策略是如何随着时间的推移而改变的。这项研究还将产生更广泛的影响。它将加强美国研究人员与几个哥伦比亚机构的研究人员之间现有的合作关系。其研究结果将在国内和国际会议和同行评议期刊文章中传播；原始数据将在匹兹堡大学的比较考古数据库中在线提供给学者和公众。实地工作将为美国和哥伦比亚的学生提供考古实地方法以及在实验室处理和分析文化材料的培训。该项目将有助于当地社区建立考古博物馆的持续努力，打击非法挖掘考古遗址，提高公众对考古遗迹的文化和科学价值的认识。

Under the supervision of Dr. Robert D. Drennan, Hernando Giraldo will carry out a program of intensive surface collection and test excavations at the Malagana site in the Cauca River valley of southwestern Colombia. The earliest written documentation of Cauca valley societies, dating to the sixteenth century, describes wealthy and powerful chiefs leading small regional polities engaged in intensive conflict with each other. These historical sources have inspired much generalization about the role of conflict and warfare in early complex societies. There is, however, very little direct archaeological documentation of the developmental trajectories of Cauca valley societies or the bases of chiefly power in them. Thus one knows little about the social forces that produced the situation described in the accounts of early Spanish Conquistadores. Tombs excavated at the Malagana site have often contained extremely elaborate offerings of gold, ceramics, and other materials, and these are often taken as evidence of considerable wealth accumulation by the community's elites. In an unusually conspicuous suggestion of conflict, the site is surrounded by a ditch and embankment which may have served defensive purposes.This research is important because it will contribute to understanding of the formation and maintenance of social inequalities and the nature of social power. The level of social complexity exhibited at Malagana is duplicated in many regions of the developing world today and through examination of an archaeological case where such processes can be followed across centuries significant insights can be gained.Mr. Giraldo will systematically collect artifacts available on the surface of the densely occupied residential zone associated with the Malagana cemetery and ditch feature. Analysis of these artifacts will enable him to assess differences in the nature and costliness of possessions in different households and in the nature and intensity of both ritual and productive activities carried out in different places. His mapping of the residential zone will delineate its relationship to the possible defensive wall and help to determine whether that is in fact its function. Such information will make possible an assessment of the importance of several potential sources of social power that have been suggested for Cauca valley societies, including wealth accumulation based on agricultural surpluses, control over specialized craft production, participation in long-distance networks of exchange of prestige goods, leadership in warfare, and manipulation of belief systems. The Malagana site provides an extraordinary opportunity to increase understanding of the ways in which early leaders gained and used social and political power, and of how these strategies were modified through time.The research will also have broader impacts. It will strengthen existing collaborative ties between U.S. researchers and those in several Colombian institutions. Its findings will be disseminated in national and international conferences and peer-review journal articles; the raw data will be available to scholars and the public online in the University of Pittsburgh's Comparative Archaeology Database. The field work will provide training to U.S. and Colombian students in archaeological field methods and in processing and analyzing cultural materials in the laboratory. The project will contribute to the local community's ongoing efforts to create an archaeological museum, combat the illicit excavation of archaeological sites, and enhance public understanding of the cultural and scientific value of archaeological remains.