An Investigation Of Long Term Integrative Mechanisms In A Colonial Context

Dr. Steve Kosiba, of the University of Minnesota, and colleagues will conduct interdisciplinary research to understand the practices through which people of diverse ethnicities create new communities to withstand oppressive political regimes. Previous scholarship on such communities has studied the cultural resilience of already-established ethnic groups, focusing on historical accounts of how enslaved or colonized peoples endured their social predicament by maintaining traditions, developing common cultural symbols, or participating in public political actions. Archaeology, with its unique ability to trace the materials and spaces people used across time, is well positioned to offer important new insights into the formation and persistence of ethnically diverse communities. It can reveal the more inconspicuous practices and hidden interactions whereby people living under social duress sought to work across ethnic boundaries, form social ties, and bolster their autonomy in the face of authoritarian rule. Many of these practices were meant to be covert, and therefore they are not contained in the written histories or administrative documents of dominant regimes. In terms of broader scientific impacts, the project trains U.S. students in advanced scientific methods, and creates a permanent laboratory and museum space for social science, environmental, and cultural heritage research in South America.

Dr. Kosiba and the research team will combine archaeological and historical methods to study labor conditions in an authoritarian state, with emphasis on whether and how subject laborers founded communities by orchestrating a hidden economy. The project focuses on Rumiqolqa, a massive labor colony in Cuzco, Peru where forcibly relocated workers from various Andean ethnicities quarried stone for successive Inca and then Spanish imperial regimes (AD 1450-1650). Preliminary archaeological research indicates that Inca and Spanish authorities segregated and confined laborers at Rumiqolqa, but archival studies demonstrate that these laborers banded together and founded a new community that persisted for centuries. The research tests the hypothesis that, despite persistent imperial attempts to restrict interaction and cultural expression within the colony, these laborers coordinated domestic tasks and other production routines in inconspicuous ways to empower a community that was beyond the view of authorities. Detailed archaeological mapping and excavations will record the architecture of the colony, revealing how Inca and Spanish regimes constrained interactions among laborers. Excavations of neighborhoods and work areas will uncover the practices through which the laborers integrated communities by pooling labor, establishing clandestine trade networks, or sharing resources. Archival studies and analyses of human burials will provide unprecedented information on the ethnic claims, physical trauma, health, nutrition, and individual status of indigenous Andean people who labored for Inca and Spanish empires. To link together and analyze these types of evidence, the project assembles a digital database that will benefit archaeological science by developing a method for the systematic documentation and analysis of artifacts and materials across space and time.