I am an anthropological archaeologist interested in the origins and maintenance of inequality in human societies.  Although there has been extensive research on the Inka Empire in Cusco, Peru (AD 1400 - 1532), my work at the site of Yuthu is the only excavation project in the region that focuses on how inherited inequality developed and how multi-village polities emerged for the first time in Formative period village societies (2200 BC - AD 200).  

My research at Yuthu has focused equally on domestic and ritual life.  I have found that early villagers utilized more than one mountain ecological zone to meet their subsistence needs, carried out myriad daily activities (such as cooking, fuel collecting, and cranial modification), and took part in periodic activities (such as pottery making and weaving).

One of the most exciting aspects of my work has been the identification of the earliest mummies in Cusco.  The later Inka are famous for believing in the continued influence of kings long after their death.  As mummies, the kings controlled access to resources and participated in politics as oracles.  Through careful study of human burial deposits focused on taphonomy, I have learned that by the Late Formative period (by 100 BC), a few individuals were stored as desiccated mummies in accessible places so that the living could continue to interact with them long after their deaths.  In addition, the main architectural elements in the ceremonial sector at Yuthu (a platform, sunken plaza, and canals) aligned with significant nearby and distant lakes, mountains, and glacial peaks.  A ceremonial system shaped by ideology in which rights to land and resources were established by ancestors and conceptualized through relationships with a sacred landscape developed in societies without significant social inequalities and may have played a role in the early development of regional polities in Cusco. 

After my success using taphonomy to identify mummies in the rainy highlands, I became excited about the utility of such methods (including archaeothanatology) for studying ritual practice.  To explore this potential, I organized a conference called “Death, Decay, and Discovery” at the Joukowsky Institute for Archaeology and the Ancient World at Brown University in the spring of 2011 (http://proteus.brown.edu/deathdecaydiscovery/Home).