The UMMAA is pleased to present Julia Earle, a PhD candidate in the Department of Anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, who will speak on Friday, October 29, 12-1 p.m., as part of the online UMMAA Brown Bag Lecture Series.
In her talk, Building the Sacred Valley: Landscape transformation during the Killke Period (ca. 1000–1400 CE), Earle will discuss her research on a series of construction and engineering projects in the Sacred Valley of Peru, near Cusco, carried out by consecutive Inka regimes over the course of Inka state expansion. By transforming the landscape, these projects aimed to materialize sovereign claims while ostensibly delegitimizing the legacies of the local non-Inka peoples that occupied this region. Contrary to ethnohistoric narratives that portray the Sacred Valley as wild and uncivilized prior to Inka intervention, regional archaeological research has begun to reveal how local groups actively adapted the environment to support their diverse lifeways, both before and during Inka occupation. Earle presents the results of site survey and reconnaissance in the Sacred Valley, drawing on architecture, terrace systems, and tombs as evidence to reconstruct the shifting political landscape during the Killke Period and evaluate the development of early Inka strategies of statecraft and territorial expansion.
Zoom Link:
https://umich.zoom.us/j/95567379046
The Museum’s Brown Bag Lecture Series is free and open to the public.
