Power in the Hands of Many: A Bioarchaeological Approach to Study Social Inequality in the Ancient Andes, North Coast of Peru (400-200 cal. B.C.)
Since 2017, I have worked as one of the project bioarchaeologists of the Programa Arqueológico Huanchaco (PAHUAN, PI Dr. Gabriel Prieto, University of Florida). My own research program focuses on the study of the emergence of social inequality in small-scale maritime communities in the ancient Andes. I analyzed human remains and mortuary contexts from the José Olaya - La Iglesia Site (Moche Valley, North Coast of Peru), a cemetery of a small-scale fishing community during the late Early Horizon (400-200 cal. B.C.). Although most research in this period focuses on settlement patterns and architecture analysis, more recent emphasis on domestic settings investigates inequality within groups as part of large social systems, an approach that has revealed important information on past social dynamics.
However, little is known concerning how the emergence of inequality affected peoples’ daily lives in this region from the perspective of human skeletons and their burial contexts. I combined both bioarchaeological and mortuary evidence to conduct a more holistic study to investigate the expression of social inequality in material remains during the late Early Horizon. Importantly, this project also contributed to our anthropological understanding of the emergence of social inequality from the perspective of individuals in small-scale communities.
This project was supported by: Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Dissertation Fieldwork Grant (#10343), The U.S. Fulbright Open Research Grant (Perú), the NSF Graduate Research Fellowship (#1842473), the Ford Predoctoral Fellowship, the University of Florida International Center Research Abroad for Doctoral Students, and the University of Florida Elizabeth M. Eddy Summer New Graduate Student Research Award.
The North Burial Ground Documentation Project
PIs: Dr. Jordi A. Rivera Prince (Anthropology) and Annalisa Heppner (Director, North Burial Ground)
Nearly 325 years of United States history can be found between North Main Street, I-95, and Branch Avenue—the City of Providence Parks Department’s own North Burial Ground (NBG). However, a majority of this history is rendered inaccessible as much of the data is not in a structured format. Rather, the data is found directly on the 100,000 tombstones found across the 150 acre historic cemetery, and in some cases in handwritten records. NBG is at a key juncture in which systematic documentation of tombstones is an urgent necessity in order to preserve a significant piece of Providence’s past, especially as natural processes and human action can cause destruction to the tombstones.
The North Burial Ground Documentation Project is a community-engaged research project to record, digitize, and transcribe tombstones and written records at NBG. The NBG Documentation Project is a collaboration between Brown Anthropology and North Burial Ground, with connection and technical support from the Community-Engaged Data and Evaluation Collaborative (CEDEC) at Brown. Data from the North Burial Ground Documentation Project will be used to explore a variety of social issues throughout Providence’s history, including changes in religious beliefs, public health and life expectancy throughout time, and investigate histories of communities typically not centered in US colonial narratives.
This project is supported by: the Brown University Data Science Institute Data Science @ Brown Seed Grant.
Critical Knowledge Production and (Bio)Archaeological Research
My research and publications are the result of my belief that we cannot study the past (especially histories of inequality), in an effective manner unless we address inequities in current archaeological practice. To this end, I have written on themes regarding critical knowledge production in archaeological and anthropological practice.
Based on a seminar on equity and archaeological practice (LeClerc et al. 2023), I have also published on equity in archaeological practice (Rivera Prince et al. 2022) with particular focus on exploring how various mechanisms work to produce inequitable realities for archaeological trainees and those engaged in archaeological practice. These papers were written with a large, collaborative community of coauthors using a practice we call Writing in Community (Rivera Prince et al. n.d.).
Archaeology uses numerous STEM-aligned methods rooted in the tenets of scientific inquiry. There is much labor, time, and expertise that has gone into the development of these methods. As we enter a new field of critical inquiry and questioning our positionality as researchers and practicing archaeologists, their use may warrant critical reflection.
A recent coauthored article with an environmental archaeologist and zooarchaeologist (Milton et al. 2023) is a call to (bio)archaeologists to critically evaluate the use of isotopic analyses in archaeological practice. We evaluate the motivations for running isotope analyses with human remains, but importantly offer potential avenues for moving forward with isotopic research in a more reflexive manner. Another article (Rivera Prince and Brock Morales 2024) explicitly centers archaeological backdirt. We argue that backdirt—piles of dirt created from digging units in an archaeological excavation—is largely ignored in the archaeological literature. By theorizing backdirts, exploring their various temporal, spatial, and processual properties, we demonstrate that backdirt is always in process, and has agency that explicitly influences archaeological practice.
Together, these projects work towards a more reflexive archaeological practice, not only in how we engage with others, but also the type of knowledge we produce with archaeological data and how those narratives work to promote and/or obscure particular narratives about the past and present day.
PIA - Proyecto Arqueológico del Valle Virú Oeste (PIA-PAVVO)
PIA - Proyecto Arqueológico del Valle Virú Oeste (PIA-PAVVO) began in 2023, and is a long-term community-based archaeology program on the coastal Virú Valley of Perú co-directed with Lic. Aleksalía Isla Alayo. This project is currently on pause due to safety concerns in the region.
Monumentality in Late Preceramic Coastal Perú: A Bioarchaeological and Mortuary Perspective at Huaca Negra, Virú Valley (ca. 3050 - 1650 BCE)
How did coastal communities embody and ritualize the social changes associated with the emergence of monumental construction? This project investigates how community heath and burial customs were impacted in a fishing community during the Late Preceramic Period on the North Coast of Perú. (ca. 3,050 to 1650 BCE). Some argue monuments in the Central Andes were constructed by controlled corporate labor, while others view the construction of monumental sites as the result of community initiatives. This project complements previous research by exploring whether the emergence of public architecture was the result of community initiatives as revealed by bioarchaeological and mortuary evidence.
The 2024 field season focused on a Preceramic cemetery at Huaca Negra, located on the coast of the Virú Valley, La Libertad. This site was occupied before, during, and after the construction of a public temple, Templo de las Llamas, in the late Preceramic period. Though analysis of the bioarchaeological and mortuary evidence, we ask: 1) How did the people of Huaca Negra materialize identity in ritual contexts before, during, and after the construction of the temple? 2) Were the people of Huaca Negra experiencing coercion during the emergence of monumentality? 3) What was the quality of life like for the people of Huaca Negra before, during, and after the construction of the temple?
PIA-PAVVO is supported by: The Society for American Archaeology H. and T. King Grant for Archaeology of the Ancient Americas.
