Mark Lycett
My current research interests focus on the historical anthropology and social ecology of landscape formation, biodiversity, and power relations in South Asia. I am interested in the interplay of cultural landscapes and forest history; in the relationship between commemoration, social memory, and in the cultural construction of place in southern India. I have also written extensively on the social history and historical ecology of place and landscape in the Spanish Colonial Americas.
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The eponymous capital of Vijayanagara was largely abandoned following the defeat of the imperial army at Talikota in 1565. The city was burned and looted and its monumental temple complexes, gateways, and images left in ruins. Despite large-scale damage to architecture in the city, however, the level and focus of destruction was strikingly variable. In this paper, we draw on the material record of late Vijayanagara temple complexes and other archaeological evidence to examine patterns of differentially distributed political violence. We suggest that these patterns may be understood, in part, in terms of the contemporary politics of sovereignty, incorporation, and reconstitution of elite authority. Drawing on these observations, we discuss the role of commemorative destruction as well as post-1565 temple rededications and abandonments in the afterlife of Vijayanagara as a social space. In particular, we examine the potential of monumental violence to act as a symbol or to index social memory through a creative and fluid process of instituting claims about the past,heritage, authenticity, and the nature of the present.
and written media. The South Indian empire of Vijayanagara (c. A.D. 1300-1600) laid claim to a vast portion of the Indian subcontinent, but scholars agree neither on the nature nor the extent of power exercised by the imperial center. In this paper, we examine the ideological claims of the Vijayanagara political elite, as
they are materially expressed. Specifically, we differentiate the forms and spatial extent of centralized power and centralized authoriry in the imperial "core" versus several "peripheral" regions through the distribution and form of fortifications and temples and through a quantitative spatial analysis of inscriptions. Such claims can be related to material conditions only in the "core" region; relationships between ideological claims and archaeological patterns in that area suggest avenues for future archaeological research in complex societies. KEYWORDS: Monumentaliry, South
Asia, power, archaeological inference, Vijayanagara.
The eponymous capital of Vijayanagara was largely abandoned following the defeat of the imperial army at Talikota in 1565. The city was burned and looted and its monumental temple complexes, gateways, and images left in ruins. Despite large-scale damage to architecture in the city, however, the level and focus of destruction was strikingly variable. In this paper, we draw on the material record of late Vijayanagara temple complexes and other archaeological evidence to examine patterns of differentially distributed political violence. We suggest that these patterns may be understood, in part, in terms of the contemporary politics of sovereignty, incorporation, and reconstitution of elite authority. Drawing on these observations, we discuss the role of commemorative destruction as well as post-1565 temple rededications and abandonments in the afterlife of Vijayanagara as a social space. In particular, we examine the potential of monumental violence to act as a symbol or to index social memory through a creative and fluid process of instituting claims about the past,heritage, authenticity, and the nature of the present.
and written media. The South Indian empire of Vijayanagara (c. A.D. 1300-1600) laid claim to a vast portion of the Indian subcontinent, but scholars agree neither on the nature nor the extent of power exercised by the imperial center. In this paper, we examine the ideological claims of the Vijayanagara political elite, as
they are materially expressed. Specifically, we differentiate the forms and spatial extent of centralized power and centralized authoriry in the imperial "core" versus several "peripheral" regions through the distribution and form of fortifications and temples and through a quantitative spatial analysis of inscriptions. Such claims can be related to material conditions only in the "core" region; relationships between ideological claims and archaeological patterns in that area suggest avenues for future archaeological research in complex societies. KEYWORDS: Monumentaliry, South
Asia, power, archaeological inference, Vijayanagara.
Pedro, was both an ancestral Pueblo village and a Spanish colonial mission site. Over the past
decade, research in this setting has addressed colonial incorporation and transformation, the
constitution of marginality in new social geographies, and the import of differential incorporative
practices on each of these processes. Drawing on examples from paleoethnobotanical and
metallurgical findings, this paper discusses the importance of multi-disciplinary approaches to
historic settings and examines the emergence of novel systems of production in colonial settings
as an historical process.
Since 1996, our reseach at LA 162 has addressed the relationship between Spanish colonization and the historical transformation of indigenous societies in the northern Southwest. We are particularly interested in the occupational history and spatial organization of contact period settlements, and the organization of indigenous economic practices and their articulation with colonial production and distribution networks Over the last 85 years several large scale excavation projects have been conducted at LA 162.
Both surface documentation and excavation suggest that the occupational history and construction sequence is complex and discontinuous. There is a widespread and intensive occupation early fifteenth centuries, followed by about a century of abandonment. Colonial period (ca. AD 1540 to AD 1680) occupation of the site is restricted to a single plaza group in the southwest quarter of the north division. Features associated with this colonial period occupation include soil and water control facilities, corral enclosures, and a copper smelting facility.
Horizontal exposure of superimposed plaza surfaces provides a sample of temporally distinct extramural occupation surfaces and their associated assemblages. In the remainder of this poster, we focus on two plaza surfaces constructed and used during the colonial occupation of the site. We explore the occupational histories of these plaza surfaces then relate these histories to formal and functional aspects of their associated ceramic assemblages.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vzk-ss5Uqsc