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Paper Information:
Type: Paper
Paper Title: MOVING OBJECTS AND FLUID SUBJECTS: ON THE CIRCULATION OF BODIES, THINGS, AND IDEAS IN TIWANAKU SOCIETY
Author: NICOLE COUTURE, DEBORAH BLOM (University of Vermont), MARIA BRUNO (Washington University in St. Louis)   
Date/Time: Thu., 10:15 AM
Co-Author(s): NICOLE COUTURE, DEBORAH BLOM (University of Vermont), MARIA BRUNO (Washington University in St. Louis) 
Abstract: In recent decades the expansion of the Pre-Columbian Tiwanaku state (ca. AD 600-1000) has been characterized largely as the unidirectional flow of displaced people from old highland centers to newly established colonies or diaspora communities in the distant reaches of the polity. We argue that this characterization has produced a falsely static vision of Tiwanaku’s urban capital that fails to take into account the cosmopolitan nature of its population and the ways in which people (both living and dead), objects, and ideas circulated in and out of the city. Drawing on new field research and laboratory analyses of both domestic space and mortuary contexts at the site of Tiwanaku, we address the ways in which different forms of social identity and group affiliation were negotiated and enacted in everyday life and ritual practice. By taking a multidisciplinary approach, -including bioarchaeology, paleoethnobotany, and analyses of material culture - we demonstrate that the identity of urban dwellers was fluid, subjective and contingent. While anchored in the hearths, houses, tombs, and temples of local neighborhoods, it was also influenced by relationships with places and people beyond their doorsteps, from the community temple around the corner, to the monuments, mountains, and town down the road, and the distant communities located well beyond the Tiwanaku homeland. As such, we challenge core/periphery dichotomies that dominate discourse in Tiwanaku studies.

Program Number: 2-0215
Session Title: MOVING BODIES, BEING SUBJECTS: ETHNOGRAPHIC, ARCHAEOLOGICAL AND HISTORICAL APPROACHES TO MOBILITY
Session Sponsor: Co-Sponsored by Archaeology Division and Archaeology Division
Session Date/Time: Thu., 8:00 AM-11:45 AM
Organizer(s): MAUREEN MARSHALL (University of Chicago), MICHELLE LELIEVRE (University of Chicago) 
Chair(s): MAUREEN MARSHALL (University of Chicago)  
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