Dissertation Research: Subsistence Economy and Chiefdom Emergence in the Muisca Area

16世纪，早期西班牙人来到哥伦比亚中部山区的穆伊斯卡社会，他们的酋长拥有强大的权力和高度的尊重，工匠们制作的手工艺品质量高、种类多，有时还使用从其他地区获得的原材料。早期西班牙人的记载特别强调穆伊斯卡社会的“先进”经济发展，在欧洲人看来，穆伊斯卡社会组织良好，贸易繁荣，人口稠密，尽管居住在相当寒冷、潮湿、高海拔的地区，但食物供应充足。对南美洲北方的几个地区酋长进行考古研究后发现，他们的生计和手工业经济并不涉及高度的贸易、贡赋或家庭相互依赖。这种新出现的模式与16世纪对穆伊斯卡的描述形成了鲜明对比。穆伊斯卡社会的考古学证据充其量只能不完全证实历史资料中的描述，特别是关于地方、区域和超区域经济相互依存模式的发展以及这种经济对酋长权力出现的重要性。然而，历史资料中特别讨论的经济相互依存的一个方面是，几乎没有进行过考古调查这是对靠近穆伊斯卡主要中心的温暖低海拔地区的农业开发。在这些地区，更高的温度导致更高的生产力，以及保护免受霜冻的影响，霜冻是穆伊斯卡中心地带农业的持续风险。有详细的16世纪的历史帐户的重要性，这些资源为维持非常高的人口密度的穆伊斯卡中心地带，高密度充分证明了历史和考古资料。Drennan，Pedro Argüello将在Tena地区从Muisca中心地带的西部边缘向Magdalena河流域延伸的斜坡上进行约100平方公里的系统区域调查。特纳地区海拔从2200米到700米不等，16世纪的文献中特别提到，它是博戈塔酋长领地的主要农产品来源。如果随着穆伊斯卡酋长的出现和发展以及穆伊斯卡高海拔中心地带人口的增加，其农业资源得到越来越密集的开发，这将反映在特纳地区人类居住分布格局的变化中。这样的结果将为穆伊斯卡酋长权力的经济基础之一的历史记载提供更有力的支持，而不是从穆伊斯卡经济其他方面的考古调查中获得的支持。这将有助于解释穆伊斯卡酋长的发展相对较晚但却极为迅速，并有助于在对巩固政治权力的总体途径进行比较分析时正确定位这些社会。首先，它将对博士候选人的培训以及来自哥伦比亚几所大学的本科生的培训做出重要贡献。第二，它将通过向当地社区介绍科学知识来促进公众对科学的认识，并提供信息，加强地方当局保护其文化遗产的努力。

Muisca societies located in the central mountains of Colombia impressed early Spanish arrivals in the sixteenth century with the power and level of respect commanded by their chiefs and the quality and variety of the crafts their artisans produced, sometimes from raw materials obtained from other regions. Early Spanish accounts especially emphasize the "advanced" economic development of Muisca societies, with what seemed to European eyes especially well organized and flourishing trade and dense populations that were well provisioned despite the fairly cold, wet, high-elevation zone they inhabited. As several regional chiefdoms in northern South America have been studied archaeologically, it has often turned out that their subsistence and craft economies do not involve very high degrees of trade, tribute, or household interdependence. This emerging pattern contrasts with sixteenth-century descriptions of the Muisca. The archaeological evidence of Muisca societies has provided at best only incomplete confirmation of the descriptions in historical sources, particularly in regard to the development of local, regional, and supra-regional patterns of economic interdependence and the importance of such an economy to the emergence of chiefly power.One aspect of economic interdependence specifically discussed in the historical sources, however, has been subject to very little archaeological investigation. This is the agricultural exploitation of warmer low-elevation zones located quite close to some of the principal Muisca chiefly centers. In these areas higher temperatures led to greater productivity as well as protection from the frosts that were a constant risk to agriculture in the Muisca heartland. There are detailed sixteenth-century historical accounts of the importance of these resources for sustaining the very high population densities of the Muisca heartland, high densities fully attested to by both historical and archaeological information.Under the supervision of Dr. Robert D. Drennan, Pedro Argüello will carry out a systematic regional survey of some 100 sq km in the Tena region on the slopes leading down from the western edge of the Muisca heartland toward the valley of the Magdalena River. The Tena region, which ranges from 2200 m above sea level down to about 700 m, is specifically mentioned in sixteenth-century documents as a major source of agricultural produce for the Bogotá chiefdom. If its agricultural resources were increasingly intensively exploited as Muisca chiefdoms emerged and developed and population levels in the high-elevation Muisca heartland grew, this will be reflected in changing patterns of distribution of human occupation in the Tena region. Such a result would provide stronger support for the historical accounts of one of the economic foundations of Muisca chiefly power than has been forthcoming from archaeological investigations of other aspects of Muisca economy. It would help to explain the relatively late but extremely rapid development of the Muisca chiefdoms and to position these societies properly in comparative analysis of the pathways toward the consolidation of political power in general.This project will also have broader impacts. First, it will make a vital contribution to the training of the doctoral candidate as well as to undergraduate students from several Colombian universities who will take part. Second it will contribute to the public appreciation of science through presentations to local communities as well as provide information that will enhance local authorities' efforts to protect their cultural heritage.