Doctoral Dissertation Improvement Award: Integration and Culture Change

这个博士论文项目将调查各州如何通过改变农村面貌来巩固权力和扩大领土控制。具体地说，这个项目将跟踪帝国心脏地带在一个政治上支离破碎的农牧群体居住的地区的形成。纵观历史，国家社会通过声称对自然资源和土地管理不善来改变景观以使其权威归化并败坏土著居民的声誉。尽管现代民族国家已经建立了边界，但有争议的土地主张仍然在世界许多地区引发冲突，被边缘化的人口通过争夺国家权威来争夺主权和领土完整。这个项目着眼于各州如何通过改造现有的建筑环境来宣称占领领土和支持扩张，并评估这种努力的长期效果。考古学是一个极好的工具，可以在广阔的时间和空间范围内追踪政治项目的成败。利用考古学的方法，这项研究将评估政治主权的战略，并确定威胁国家社会寿命的矛盾，如建筑环境所表现的那样。该项目将与秘鲁职业生涯初期的研究人员密切合作，提供培训和能力建设机会。除了构成论文研究的基础外，两名当地考古学学生将在完成学位的项目中进行论文研究。研究团队将分析建筑和景观修改实践，以了解INKAS是如何建立和管理他们的帝国心脏地带的。通过对大约五千年的长期观察，我们可以了解塑造该地区的不断变化的地缘政治条件以及非国家政治单位留下的遗产。种族多样的农牧群体在圣谷定居，并开始在这片山区景观中修建山顶村庄、农业梯田和地上坟墓。几个世纪后，印加民族扩大了对山谷的政治影响；他们的存在越来越多地体现在谷底的灌溉农田和当地(非印加)领土的行政前哨。到西班牙入侵时，这个山谷已经成为支持INKAS主权意识形态和政治经济的基础，这些政治经济通过庄园系统和密集的景观工程项目来运作。INKAS的扩张战略是如何应对现有的建筑环境的？INKAS的干预对当地居民和风景有何影响？这项研究将通过定义在西班牙裔晚期塑造这一景观的实践来回答这些问题，包括建筑的标准化、农业系统的集中化和殡仪馆实践的多样性。该项目的贡献包括开发一种创新的研究方法，定量衡量建筑技术的差异，以比较当地和区域范围内生产的社会政治背景。这项研究产生的数据可以与全球案例进行比较，以更好地理解人类行为，包括景观修改做法和领土。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This doctoral dissertation project will investigate how states consolidate power and expand territorial control by transforming rural landscapes. Specifically, this project will track the formation of an imperial heartland in a region inhabited by politically fragmented agropastoral groups. Throughout history, state societies have transformed landscapes to naturalize their authority and discredit indigenous inhabitants by alleging mismanagement of natural resources and land. Although modern nation-states have established borders, disputed land claims still trigger conflict in many world regions and marginalized populations fight for sovereignty and territorial integrity by contesting state authority. This project looks at how states claim occupied territories and support expansion by transforming existing built environments and evaluates the efficacy of such endeavors over the long term. Archaeology is an excellent tool to track the successes and failures of political projects across expansive temporal and spatial scales. Using archaeological methods, this research will evaluate strategies of political sovereignty and identify contradictions that threaten the longevity of state societies, as manifested in the built environment. This project will be conducted in close collaboration with early-career researchers in Peru, providing training and capacity-building opportunities. In addition to forming the basis of dissertation research, two local archaeology students will conduct their thesis research in tandem with the project for the completion of their degrees.The research team will analyze construction and landscape modification practices to understand how the Inkas established and managed their imperial heartland. Taking a long-term view over roughly half a millennium sheds light on the changing geopolitical conditions that shaped this region and the legacies of non-state political units. Ethnically diverse agropastoral groups settled in the Sacred Valley and began to build hilltop villages, agricultural terraces, and above-ground tombs across this mountainous landscape. Centuries later the Inka ethnic group had expanded political influence into the valley; their increasing presence was materialized in irrigated agricultural lands along the valley floor and administrative outposts in local (non-Inka) territories. By the Spanish invasion the valley had become foundational in supporting the Inkas’ sovereign ideology and political economy, which operated through estate systems and intensive landscape engineering projects. How did the Inkas’ strategies of expansion respond to the existing built environment? And how did the Inkas’ interventions impact local inhabitants and landscapes? This research will respond to these questions by defining the practices that shaped this landscape during the late pre-Hispanic period, including the standardization of architecture, centralization of agricultural systems, and diversity in mortuary practices. The contributions of this project include the development of an innovative research methodology that quantitatively measures variation in construction techniques to compare the sociopolitical context of production at local and regional scales. The data produced by this study can be compared with global cases to better understand human behavior including landscape modification practices and territoriality.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.