Recent Alumni

Ryan Smith

Ryan is interested in studying the organization and management of large-scale social and economic interaction networks in non-state societies and how these networks relate to social identity, conflict, subsistence, and shifts in political centralization. His dissertation research will explore a complex system of resource exchange and ritual interaction which connected highlands and lower-lying eastern valleys in the central Andes during late prehispanic periods (AD 1000-1530). One of the major goals of this research is to understand the development of these interaction networks in the Late Intermediate Period, a time marked by political segmentation and internecine conflict ushered by the fall of the Wari and Tiwanaku states around AD 1000 and lasting until the expansion of the Inca empire in the fifteenth century.

Patrick Mullins

Patrick Mullins is interested in prehistoric frontiers, coastal-highland interaction, warfare, and fortifications in the Andes. During the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1470 AD), the Chimú Empire had a heavily fortified hinterland that spread from their capital at Chan Chan, on Peru's Pacific coast, to perhaps the upper tributaries of the Moche River. Patrick's research aims at understanding the extent and nature of the fortified Chimú hinterland and the interactions that created the shared frontier between the coastal Chimú, middle/upper valley, and highland settlements. He spent part of summer 2013 surveying Neolithic - Iron Ages sites in Serbia.