Early Complex Societies

Manuel Calongos Curotto

Manuel received his bachelor’s degree from the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Peru, in 2015. He is interested how the different Andean societies experienced change in their social organization as a result of the Inca expansion and conquest of the Andean territories. Specifically, Manuel research focuses in analyzing the differences in the management of territory during the Late Intermediate Period (AD 900 – 1476) and the Late Horizon (AD 1476 – 1532) in the Cañete valley, Lima, Peru. He wants to understand the social and political changes the local inhabitants of the Cañete valley experience after the Inca conquest of the valley.

Degrees and Education

BA - Archaeology - Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos (2015)

Francisco García-Albarido

Francisco García-Albarido research how political-economic processes reshaped the socioeconomic structures of Latin-American local communities since the early modern era. One of his main objects of study is the interplay between colonial routes and market expansion in the South-Central Andes. In specific, Francisco is interested in how local communities engaged with the mercantile flow and made possible the market expansion, and how this participation crystallized new dimensions of inequality and consolidated new local elites. He is exploring these dynamics in the local communities that constituted the routes of Potosí both in Chile and Bolivia. Francisco earned a bachelor’s degree in archaeology at the University of Chile and a master’s degree in anthropology at Colorado State University. His professional experience includes more than a decade of survey, excavation and material culture analysis in the Atacama Desert and the Altiplano.

Victor Gonzales Avendano

Jose Victor Gonzales Avendaño is a PhD student in Archaeology, focused on Latin American Archaeology at the University of Pittsburgh. 

I received my initial training in archaeology from the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (UNSAAC) where I obtained my B.S. in Archaeology in 2010 and Licentiate as an archaeologist in 2012. I have worked, support and directed several Archeological Research Projects that covered surveys, excavations and material analysis, mostly in the Cuzco Area covering a time frame from 1000 B.C. to the 16th century.

My research aims to explain the construction, transformation and reinforce of identities caused the impact of complex societies with hegemonic characteristics on local people in the Cuzco region, through material analysis, urban planning strategies and funerary practices.    

 

Degrees and Education

Bachelor in Archaeology degree given by the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (2010)
Licentiate in Archaeology degree given by the Universidad Nacional de San Antonio Abad del Cusco (2012)

Courtney Besaw

Courtney Besaw is a historical archaeologist who focuses on Latin American archaeology.

She primarily works on the coast of Belize studying the colonial period. She is interested in studying ethnogenesis (the continuation or emergence of new identities) and assimilation of immigrant peoples to northern Belize following the Caste War of Yucatan. Her interests also include “illegal” settlements, household archaeology, and identity.

 

Degrees and Education

BS in Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona
BS in Psychology, Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona

Awards

2017-2018 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology
2019-2020 Graduate Fellowship in Latin American Archaeology

Juan Carlos Vargas

Juan Carlos Vargas is interested in the relationship between intensive agricultural production and the emergence of leadership in the South American lowlands. To pursue this issue he is carrying out a systematic regional settlement study of some 250 sq km in the municipality of Yopal in the Llanos of Casanare (Colombia) in order to compare the developmental trajectories of these early complex societies with those from the Llanos of Barinas (Venezuela). His aim is to advance understanding of just how these trajectories differed from each other, and how these differences emerged in two parts of the same broad environmental zone in the Orinoco basin. His research is supported by the National Science Foundation and will collaborate with the local Cataruben Foundation to help further its aims of environmental and heritage management and research. The project's results will comprise a heritage inventory for the survey area, which will aid in protecting these cultural resources. PhD 2017!

Degrees and Education

PhD - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2017)

Junyang Cao

My name is Junyang Cao (曹俊阳). I come from Henan, China, and I received my Bachelor’s degrees in Archaeology at Zhengzhou University in 2015. I am interested in hunter-gatherer and environment interactions and the ways in which hunter-gatherers adapt to paleoenvironmental fluctuations in East Asia, with a focus on the subsistence shifts of hunter-gatherers in arid and semi-arid North China during Upper Paleolithic period. I have a passion for lithic micro wear analysis in revealing the function of lithic tools and the evolution of human behavior. And I am also interested in conducting experiments such as flint knapping and plant harvesting to experience hunting-gathering life! Currently I am working with Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Ningxia Institute of Cultural Relics and Archeology in Pigeon Mountain, Ningxia, with a focus on how the evolution of stone toolkits reflect the hunter-gatherer behavior such as mobility and settlement patterns.

Degrees and Education

MA - Anthropology - University of Pittsburgh (2018)
BA - Archaeology - Zhengzhou University, China (2015)

Peter Daniel Ellis

Peter Ellis is interested in the interaction between Russian merchants and the Natives of southwest Alaska in the 18th and 19th centuries. More specifically, he is interested in the ways the Native people organized themselves on the landscape and within communities as they negotiated the new forces created by a Russian presence.  

Degrees and Education

BA - Anthropology - Wake Forest University (2014)