- Survey Methodology, Mortuary archaeology, Peruvian Archaeology, Monumentality, Landscape Archaeology, Chincha, and 11 moreLate Intermediate Period, Geographic Information Systems (GIS), Andean Archaeology, Andes, Mortuary Practices, Textiles, Photogrammetry, Recuay culture, Late Horizon Period, 3D GIS, 3D Visualization, 3D modeling, and Imperialismedit
- http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/people/research-associates/jacob-bongers I am an anthropological archaeologist working in ... morehttp://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/people/research-associates/jacob-bongers
I am an anthropological archaeologist working in the Peruvian Andes who is interested in developing understandings of how ritual practice mediated interactions between complex societies and contributed to sociopolitical change. Currently, I am a Senior Research Associate in the Sainsbury Research Unit at the University of East Anglia. I received my Ph.D. in Archaeology from the Cotsen Institute of Archaeology at UCLA. My dissertation explores the dynamic between mortuary practice, imperial conquest, and sociopolitical change in southern Peru (ca. AD 1200 – 1650). Before joining the Sainsbury Research Unit, I conducted archaeological fieldwork in Portugal, Chile, Ethiopia, Oman, and Peru. I bring my skills in archaeological excavation and survey, mapping, GIS, photogrammetry, aerial photography, and 3D modeling to the "Rise of Divine Lordships" project, which is centered in northern Ancash, Peru and led by George Lau (Salisbury Research Unit, University of East Anglia) and David Chicoine (Louisiana State University).
http://www.sru.uea.ac.uk/people/research-associates/jacob-bongersedit - George Lauedit
For at least four decades, archaeologists have identified irrigation as playing a potentially major role in the rise of Aksumite civilization. Based on a systematic survey covering the area between Aksum and Yeha (Ethiopia), Joseph... more
For at least four decades, archaeologists have identified irrigation as playing a potentially major role in the rise of Aksumite civilization. Based on a systematic survey covering the area between Aksum and Yeha (Ethiopia), Joseph Michels proposed that large-scale irrigation systems introduced from Southwest Arabia contributed to the rise of Yeha as a major center of Pre-Aksumite civilization. To evaluate spatial patterning of archaeological sites with respect to water availability, this paper reports on results from archaeological survey of a 100 km 2 region surrounding Yeha conducted by the Southern Red Sea Archaeological Histories (SRSAH) Project from 2009 to 2016. The SRSAH Project recorded 84 sites dating from the Pre-Aksumite to the Post-Aksumite periods (c.800 BCE to 900 CE). No ancient irrigation systems were identified and results do not show a correlation between archaeological sites and water resources. This suggests that irrigation was less important than Michels contended and that rainfed agriculture, terraces, and small-scale irrigation comparable with practices evident in the region today were sufficient to sustain ancient populations.
Research Interests:
Variation in textile production processes from archaeological contexts can distinguish communities of weavers and signal distinct group identities. In this paper, we present an analysis of 141 textiles recovered from a single grave... more
Variation in textile production processes from archaeological contexts can distinguish communities of weavers and signal distinct group identities. In this paper, we present an analysis of 141 textiles recovered from a single grave located in the mid-Chincha Valley, Peru that dates from the Late Horizon (1400–1532 CE) to the Colonial Period (1532–1825 CE). This sample represents one of the largest and best-preserved textile assemblages from a clearly defined and radiocarbon-dated archaeological context in the Chincha Valley. For this study, we document techniques used in two distinct phases of textile production: yarn production (spinning and plying) and weaving. We 1) develop a manual hierarchical classification method for identifying groups of textiles featuring consistent associations among techniques used for each production phase and 2) assess how these groups vary in terms of thread count, size, garment type, and design. Our results reveal six groupings of textile production techniques that account for 71% of the assemblage by count. We compare these results to that of an independent cluster analysis that examines the joint co-occurrence of yarn production and weaving techniques and find that they are largely in accordance with each other. We suggest that these multiple textile groups corresponded to distinct communities or households of weavers associated with this grave. Our study provides a methodology for analyzing the variation and consistency of textile production to learn about communities of weavers within and outside the Andes.
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Research Interests: Archaeology, Landscape Archaeology, Archaeological GIS, Archaeology of Oman, Spatial archaeology, and 12 moreSpatial analysis (Archaeology), 3d, GIS and Landscape Archaeology, Archaeological survey, Journal of Oman Studies, Ancient Water Technology, Ancient Irrigation Systems, Arabian/Persian Gulf Archaeology, Ancient South Arabia, Archaeological surveying and mapping, Remote sensing in archaeology, and Early Bronze Age Oman
Advocates of traditional, agriculture-based models of sociopolitical evolution argue that the adoption of domesticates is requisite for developments such as sedentism, village life, ascribed status, hereditary leadership, and other... more
Advocates of traditional, agriculture-based models of sociopolitical evolution argue that the adoption of domesticates is requisite for developments such as sedentism, village life, ascribed status, hereditary leadership, and other features that underpin institutionalized political complexity. We counter in this essay with a well-documented suite of politically complex hunter-gatherer (CHG) societies that exhibit these same features, thereby demonstrating that reliance on agriculture per se—or any other specific food regime such as fishing—should be excised from explanations of emergent political complexity. Despite the failure of the agricentric model to account for a significant number of cases of institutionalized complexity, some of its architects remain entrenched in their disbelief and rigidly ignore the implications of CHG studies. By continuing to situate farming as foundational to everything complex, they perpetuate not only a story of human cultural evolution over the last 10,000 years that is incomplete but also a narrative that is incorrect. We reject subsistence (domesticates) as the central organizing principle and introduce here a new forum for thinking about how societies operate and evolve. We propose a model consisting of integrated platforms of societal dynamics that are inclusive (encourage discourse of all societies), nonprogressive, and serve as an organizational structure to discuss cultural evolution in any comparative or singular ethnographic context. The platforms are nonhierarchical and not fixed in order or importance. They are (1) agency and authority, (2) social differentiation, (3) participation in communal events, (4) organization of production, (5) labor obligations, (6) articulation of ecology and subsistence, and (7) territoriality and ownership. All sociopolitical cases and all topics can be productively discussed on these platforms, from bands to the largest empires, comparatively or diachronically. In the present article, we use the platforms to examine political evolution. We assemble considerable evidence that a variety of dietary regimes are associated with the emergence of institutionalized political complexity. Rather than diet, it is the ways people integrate and use labor that demands our attention.
Research Interests:
This research explores the relationship between mortuary practice and sociopolitical change among a collection of communities incorporated into the Inca Empire. I conducted this work in the Chincha Valley of central Peru, an area... more
This research explores the relationship between mortuary practice and sociopolitical change among a collection of communities incorporated into the Inca Empire. I conducted this work in the Chincha Valley of central Peru, an area controlled by a complex polity known as the Chincha Kingdom in the Late Intermediate Period, or LIP (AD 1000 – 1400). During the Late Horizon (AD 1400 – 1532), the Chincha Kingdom fell under the rule of the Inca Empire. In this study, I investigated a dense, well-preserved distribution of graves in the middle Chincha Valley. Using methods from archaeology, GIS, and Bayesian statistical modeling, I examined the nature and development of local mortuary practice in the mid-valley from the LIP to the Late Horizon and recorded over 500 well-preserved graves that cluster into 44 mortuary sites. These sites vary in layout and have two distinct grave types that differ in architecture and use: above-ground and subterranean graves (chullpas) and subterranean cists. Radiocarbon data indicate continuity, change, and innovation in tomb use and treatment of the dead through time. I argue that these diachronic mortuary patterns were products of negotiations among indigenous groups and the Inca. Mid-valley peoples manipulated the remains of their dead to produce new deceased persons before and during their incorporation into the Inca Empire. They dynamically reconfigured the ways relationships among the living and the deceased were performed, thereby transforming their sociopolitical landscape in the face of imperial conquest. This study provides support for a model of mortuary practice as an interface through which interactions between complex societies and expansionist empires occurred.
This volume of Andean Past contains the following articles, research reports, and obituaries: "Editor's Preface" by Monica Barnes; "Donald Frederick Sola" by Monica Barnes; Paulina Mercedes Ledergerber-Crespo" by A. Jorge Arellano-Lopez;... more
This volume of Andean Past contains the following articles, research reports, and obituaries: "Editor's Preface" by Monica Barnes; "Donald Frederick Sola" by Monica Barnes; Paulina Mercedes Ledergerber-Crespo" by A. Jorge Arellano-Lopez; "Death Notices (Robert Ascher, Bernd Lambert, Daniel W. Gade, and George Bankes) by Monica Barnes and Bill Sillar; "Obsidian Procurement and Cosmopolitanism at the Middle Horizon Settlement of Conchopata, Peru" by Richard L. Burger, Catherine M. Bencic, and Michael D. Glascock; "Characteristics and Significance of Tapia Walls and the Mochica Presence at Santa Rosa de Pucala in the Mid-Lambayeque Valley" by Edgar Bracamonte; "Health at the Edge of the Wari Empire: An Analysis of Skeletal Remains from Hatun Cotuyoc, Huaro, Peru" by Sara L. Juengst and Maeve Skidmore; "Demographic Analysis of a Looted Late Intermediate Period Tomb, Chincha Valley, Peru" by Camille Weinberg, Benjamin T. Nigra, Maria Cecilia Lozada, Charles Stanish, Henry Tantalean, Jacob Bongers, and Terrah Jones; "Macrobotanical Remains from the 2009 Season at Caylan: Preliminary Insights into Early Horizon Plant Use in the Nepena Valley, North-Central Coast of Peru" by David Chicoine, Beverly Clement, and Kyle Stich; "Obsidian Technology at the Wari Site of Conchopata in Ayacucho, Peru" by Catherine M. Bencic; "Incahuasi, Canete" by Alejandro Chu; "Luis Barreda Murillo's Excavations at Huanuco Pampa, 1965" Monica Barnes; "Early Village Formation in Desert Areas of Tarapaca, Northern Chile (Eleventh Century B.C.--Thirteenth Century A.D.)" by Simon Urbina, Leonor Adan, Constanza Pellegrino, and Estefania Vidal; and "Don Mateo-El Cerro, a Newly Rediscovered Late Period Settlement in Yocavil (Catamarca, Argentina) by Alina Alvarez Larrain.