Javier Giraldo:

November 22, 2013 - 3:00pm to 4:30pm

 

Javier Giraldo, Doctoral Candidate, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh

A public dissertation presentation

"Religious Ideology, warfare, craft production and development of social inequalities in the Malagana Village, southwest Colombia (400 BC - 1550 AD)"

Abstract:

Archaeological research in northern South America has established that religion, rather than the control of economy, was the principal mechanism by which social inequalities were created and maintained in a number of regions. Malagana, the largest known prehispanic village site in the flat valley of the Cauca River of southern Colombia, however, stands out as a possible exception to such a pattern. Clear differences in wealth in the burial contexts during the Early El Bolo Period (400 BC-800 AD) support this view. The analysis of household differences in wealth consumption and their connection with production of luxury and utilitarian goods indicate that the elite was able to control the production of wealth and status items and the communal belief system by the manipulation of architectural space and symbolic charged artifacts. Such concentration of economic and religious power was made possible due to the context of regional intergroup conflict.  

Location and Address

3106 WWPH Anthropology Lounge