Archaeology

Marc Bermann

Marc Bermann is an archaeologist primarily interested in prehistoric states (particularly in the New World) and household archaeology. Other interests include the evolution of archaic empires, pre-Hispanic political organization and worldview, historiography, and peasant studies in general. His fieldwork is concerned with pre-Inca civilizations of Bolivia and Peru. Currently he serves as the Director of Graduate Studies.

Research Description

Household Life in Prehispanic Bolivia

Village sites of the Formative Period (1500 BC - AD 400) Wankarani culture of Bolivia appear as mounds made up of the accumulation of hundreds of years of house remains, domestic refuse, and the gray ash of cooking fires. Some mounds stand as high as 8 meters. The Wankarani Complex represents one of the earliest village and pottery-using populations of Bolivia.

 

Courses

Paleo-Kitchen: Prehistoric Diet, Cooking, and Domesticity

Undergradaute Seminar. Theories concerning a natural human diet, and the basis for food preferences and taboos, have long been the subject of controversy within both anthropology and the popular imagination. How do biological and cultural factors influence human food choice? In exploring this question, this course will examine the evolution of human diet from a nutritional and primate physiological perspective, and examine the symbolism of eating, consumption, and the nourished body in prehistory. Focal topics will include: current debates over hominid diets; the causes and consequences of the shift from hunting and gathering to food production; archaeological techniques for reconstructing subsistence and cooking patterns; and the development of ancient cuisines (including the Chinese, Sumerian, and Inca). In all cultures, cooking and eating are related to the definition of significant social roles. Therefore, we will investigate through case studies how food preparation spaces and gender division of labor in food preparation activities served to create domestic life in prehistory. Prerequisites: ANTH 0582 or ANTH 0780

Prehistoric Village Life

Undergraduate Seminar. No social grouping other than the family has been more widespread, enduring, and important in human life than the village. Anthropologists have long recognized the village as an essential unit of study in understanding social organization in traditional, peasant, and modern societies. Archaeologists recognize the emergence of village lie as an important threshold in societal evolution in many parts of the world. For much of human history, the village was the setting where people lived and interacted, where their perceptions and identities were formed, and where traditions and worldviews were perpetuated. This seminar will: (1) investigate the village cross-culturally as a characteristic type of human settlement, and (2) explore how village life was experienced by its members. Topics to be explored include: the village as community; leadership, sharing, and jealousy within the village; demographic perspectives; the social transformations accompanying the origins of village life; the village as adaptation; and inter-village interaction and the growth of regional political systems. Drawing on ethnographic and archaeological case studies from Europe, the Middle East, China, and South America, we will aim at comprehending why villages emerged when and how they did in the past, and why the village remains so important to societies today, if only in some cases as a vanished ideal.

Origins of Cities

This course examines the origin and characteristics of urban life. After reviewing the nature of cities in the modern world, attention will focus on prehistoric cities in the Old World and New World, and the social, political, ecological and demographic processes that led to their development. The focus of the course is on archaeological cities, but ethnographic and sociological studies of modern urban forms will be extensively used. The purpose of the course is to give students a comparative understanding and appreciation of urban life and its long history.

Archaeology Core Course

The aim of this course is to introduce students to 1) the nature of archeological information, 2) the full range of the human cultural past, from a Paleolithic beginnings to state-level societies, 3) the various theoretical propositions archeologists have found useful in understanding cultural change on this scale, and 4) the ways archeologists evaluate these propositions against the information available in the archeological record. The course examines the evolution of human culture using selected, world-wide examples to illustrate the broad sequence of human development. Particular attention will be paid to the major transitions in human history, such as the change from hunting-gathering to sedentary agricultural life ways and the rise of complex societies.

Introduction to Archaeology

Modern archeology draws much of its theory and goals from anthropology. This course will show how archaeologists use the fragmentary traces left by past peoples to develop an anthropological understanding of their cultures. We will explore the variety of ways archaeologists investigate such things as prehistoric diet, social life, politics, technology, and religion. Topics to be covered include: the nature of archaeological information, dating techniques, interpretation of material objects, and archaeological ethics. Studies from around the world will be used to illustrate major principles in archaeological research. The course will provide an understanding of how and why we study past societies, as well as the unique contribution archaeology can make to understanding ourselves. Recitation sections are an important part of the course and are not optional. Recitation section grades will be determined by a combination of participation, short quizzes, and exercises.

Elizabeth Arkush

Elizabeth Arkush (PhD UCLA 2005) is an archaeologist whose research in the Peruvian Andes has emphasized themes of war and violence, and their connections to political authority, community, and ideology. She has been engaged in field research in Peru since 1999.

Her comparative approach to understanding warfare explores how relationships of hostility and alliance shape individual, community, and regional identities, structure settlement patterns, generate social hierarchies, and inform ritual and the performance of authority. A secondary theme lies in the intersection of paleoclimate, the progressive modification of lands for agricultural and pastoral production, and Andean sociopolitical histories. Methodologically her research relies on spatial technologies such as drone mapping, GIS analysis, and remote sensing.

Research Description

Inca expansion and native resistance in the Peruvian Altiplano

This NSF-funded project in collaboration with Sarah Kennedy (Pitt PhD ’21) investigates selected Inca sites in the northern Titicaca Basin that were placed at pre-Inca hillforts (pukaras) in the northern Lake Titicaca Basin of Peru. These specific pukaras are named in later Inca-derived narratives as strongholds in a major rebellion of local Colla populations against Inca rule. We hypothesize that the structures were built by the Incas to commemorate their victory over local resistance.

Pukaras of the Peruvian Titicaca Basin

This long-term program of research has investigated conflict, political organization, and social relationships in Peru’s Lake Titicaca Basin, synthesizing fieldwork on pukara (hillfort) sites with ethnohistoric information and GIS approaches. Defensive pukara sites became very common ca. AD 1300-1450, implying that people adopted different forms of sociopolitical organization and relationships to the land than had previously characterized the region. Several field projects have specifically addressed the regional spatial patterning, chronology, economy, and intra-community organization of large pukara settlements. They include survey and excavations at Ayawiri (Machu Llaqta) in 2009-2013, an intensive study of residential and defensive architecture at Pucarani in 2015, drone-assisted mapping of several other pukaras (2017-present). A current large-scale collaborative project uses satellite prospecting and GIS to expand the scale of analysis across the south-central Andean highlands.

Charting Andean Warfare in Space and Time

This ongoing study charts patterns in the severity of warfare over time and space in the pre-Columbian Andes by synthesizing defensive settlement patterns and rates of adult craniofacial trauma drawn from published studies by many archaeologists and bioarchaeologists. In combination, these lines of evidence indicate major peaks and lulls in the severity of warfare through time, as well as distinct coastal and highland histories. Resulting patterns are discussed in her 2022 book, and the cranial trauma dataset is archived on-line at the Comparative Archaeology Database.

 

Courses

  • ​Introduction to Archaeology
  • Warfare in Archaeology and Ethnography
  • Politics in Prehistory
  • South American Archaeology
  • GIS in Archaeology
  • Hierarchy and Inequality in Ancient Societies (graduate seminar)
  • Workshop on Publishing (graduate seminar)

 

Selected Publications

Arkush, E., P. Roscoe, J. Birch and B. Raffield. 2025. Problematizing Alliance. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 79: 101706. 

Snyder, T. and E. Arkush. 2024. Political organization and gender predict violence in the Andean archaeological record. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 121 (44): e2410078121. 

Arkush, E., L. Kohut, R. Housse, R. Smith, and S. Wernke. 2024. A new view of hillforts in the south-central Andes: Expanding coverage with systematic imagery survey. Antiquity 98(397):172-192.

Arkush, E., W. McCool, and R. Smith. 2023. The Late Intermediate Period in the south-central highlands: Key problems in chronology. Quaternary International. DOI 10.1016/j.quaint.2023.10.002

Arkush, E. 2022. War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Pre-Columbian Andes. Cambridge University Press.

Arkush, E. 2022. Land use, settlement patterns, and collective defense in the Titicaca basin: the constitution of defensive community. Andean Past 13: Article 15 (339-367)

Arnold, T. E., A. L. Hillman, S. J. McGrath, M. B. Abbott, J. P. Werne, J. Hutchings, and E. N. Arkush 2021.  Fecal stanol ratios indicate shifts in camelid pastoralism in the highlands of Peru across a 4,000-year lacustrine sequence. Quaternary Science Reviews 270: 107193.

Arkush, E. and H. Ikehara. 2019. Pucarani: Defensive monumentality and political leadership in the late pre-Columbian Andes. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 53:66-81.

Arkush, E. 2018. Coalescence and Defensive Communities: Insights from an Andean Hillfort Town. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 28(1):1-22.

Arkush, E. 2018. Climbing hillforts and thinking about warfare in the pre-Columbian Andes. In Engaging Archaeological Research: Case Studies in Method, Theory, and Practice, edited by S. Silliman, pp. 15-22. Wiley Blackwell.

Arkush, E. 2017. The End of Ayawiri: Abandonment at an Andean Hillfort Town. Journal of Field Archaeology 83:1-17.

Chacaltana, S., E. Arkush, and G. Marcone (editors). 2017. Nuevas tendencias en el estudio de los caminos. Ministerio de Culturo, Proyecto Qhapaq Ñan, Lima, Peru.

Arkush, E. 2014. Soldados históricos en un panel de arte rupestre, Puno, Perú: Los caudillos del siglo XIX y el comentario político andino. Chungará 46(4):585-605.

Arkush, E. 2014. “I against my brother”: Conflict and confederation in the south-central Andes in late prehistory.  In Embattled Bodies, Embattled Places: War in Pre-Columbian Mesoamerica and the Andes, edited by A. Scherer and J. Verano, pp. 199-226.  Dumbarton Oaks Library and Collections. 

Arkush, E. and T. Tung. 2013. Patterns of War in the Andes from the Archaic to the Late Horizon: Insights from Settlement Patterns and Cranial Trauma. Journal of Archaeological Research 21(4):307-369.

Arkush, E. 2012. Los pukaras y la poder: los collas en la cuenca septentrional del Titicaca.  In Arqueología de la Cuenca del Titicaca, Perú, edited by L. Flores and H. Tantaleán, pp. 295-320.  IFEA: Lima.

Arkush, E. 2012. Violence, indigeneity, and archaeological interpretation in the central Andes.  In The Ethics of Anthropology and Amerindian Research, edited by R. J. Chacon and R. G. Mendoza, pp. 289-309. Springer. 

Arkush, E. 2011. Hillforts of the Ancient Andes: Colla Warfare, Society, and Landscape.  University Press of Florida. (Winner of the 2013 SAA Book Award.)

Arkush, E. 2011. Explaining the Past in 2010 (The Year in Review). American Anthropologist 113(2):200-212.

Arkush, E. 2008. War, causality, and chronology in the Titicaca Basin. Latin American Antiquity 19(4):339-373.

Arkush, E., and M. W. Allen (editors). 2006. The Archaeology of Warfare: Prehistories of Raiding and Conquest. University of Florida Press, Gainesville.

Arkush, E. and C. Stanish. 2005. Interpreting conflict in the ancient Andes: Implications for the archaeology of warfare. Current Anthropology 46 (1): 3-28. 

Arkush, E. 2005. Inca ceremonial sites in the southwest Titicaca Basin. In Advances in the Archaeology of the Titicaca Basin, edited by C. Stanish, A. Cohen, and M. Aldenderfer, pp. 209-242. Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press, UCLA, Los Angeles.

Kathleen M.S. Allen

Kathleen Allen is an archaeologist whose interests focus on the development of tribal societies, regional settlement patterns, and contact studies exploring the interface between anthropology, history, ethnohistory, and archaeology.

 

Research Description

Kathleen Allen's primary geographic area of research interest is the Eastern Woodlands of North America with a special focus on pre- and post-contact period Iroquoian cultures of the eastern Great Lakes. Methodological interests include the application of geographic information systems to archaeological problems and the study of ceramic form and style.

Courses

Women, Men, and Children in Archeological Perspective

This course examines men, women, and children in past societies through the use of archaeological, ethnographic, and historic information. Extensive readings will provide an overview of gender studies in the field. Topics addressed include gender and material culture; division of labor; households and domestic economy, craft specialization; power, hierarchy, ideology; and culture contact. Gender will be examined from a perspective that includes men as well as women and will include recent studies aimed at recovering children in the archaeological record. Readings will focus on recent archaeological studies of gender and much class time will be devoted to discussion of readings. Students are expected to participate in leading discussion and will write a research paper on gender in their particular area of interest. Grades will be earned primarily through class discussion and a major research paper.

Basic Laboratory Analysis

Have you ever wondered how archaeologists look at bits of stone pottery to understand how people lived in the past? This course provides you with basic skills in analyzing lithics (rocks) and pottery so you can understand how artifacts were made and used. You will learn how to tabulate data and make interpretations about the activities in which people were engaged. Classes will include lectures, discussions of readings, assignments, and lots of hands-on experience working with material culture that archaeologists find most often. In the later part of the course, students will develop a research project and do an analysis using material from an Iroquois village site occupied in the 16th century. Prerequisites: At least one prior course in Archeology such as Introduction to Archeology, Archaeology Field School, or Mesoamerica Before Cortez is required.

Pots and People

In this course we examine pottery from two perspectives: that of the people who made pots in the past and that of the archaeologists who seek to interpret pottery found at archaeological sites. The aim of this course is to engender a perspective on pottery that is based on real life experience with it. Students will work through the process of producing the clay fabric, manufacturing pots, decorating them, and firing. In the last section of the course, we analyze pottery produced in the class using archaeological techniques. These include characterizing temper, cross-section analysis to determine manufacturing techniques and firing conditions. This course will lead to a better understanding of how pottery was produced in the past and of how the analysis of it will answer archaeological questions. Readings will focus on pottery manufacture and on archaeological approaches to the study of ceramics. A Special Fee of $20.00 to cover the cost of materials. This course will be offered every other year. Prerequisites: Introduction to Archaeology

Archaeology of North American Indians

In this course we examine archaeological evidence for the occupation of Native Americans in North America prior to, during, and after contact with Europeans. We will look at contemporary Native Americans and their views about the past as well as about how archaeology informs us about past societies. Major topics include the peopling of North America and the variety of Native American cultures that existed in different regions and their long histories. Special emphasis is placed on examining the trajectories of development of more complex societies in eastern North America, the Southwest, and the Northwest coast. This course will be offered irregularly. Prerequisites: Intro to Archaeology (Anth 0582).

Introduction to Archaeology

Modern archeology draws much of its theory and goals from anthropology. This course will show how archaeologists use the fragmentary traces left by past peoples to develop an anthropological understanding of their cultures. We will explore the variety of ways archaeologists investigate such things as prehistoric diet, social life, politics, technology, and religion. Topics to be covered include: the nature of archaeological information, dating techniques, interpretation of material objects, and archaeological ethics. Studies from around the world will be used to illustrate major principles in archaeological research. The course will provide an understanding of how and why we study past societies, as well as the unique contribution archaeology can make to understanding ourselves. Recitation sections are an important part of the course and are not optional. Recitation section grades will be determined by a combination of participation, short quizzes, and exercises.