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PhD Candidate Jordan T. Downey
Doctoral Public lecture
Thursday, January 8th ● 12:00 noon ● SSC 9420
Statecraft in the Virú Valley, Peru,
in the First Millennium A.D.
This dissertation is an archaeological study of statecraft in the Virú Valley, Peru, during the Early Intermediate Period (ca. 400 B.C. – A.D. 800). Virú was the subject of an influential research program in
the 1940s (the Virú Valley Project), which produced important datasets for studying early complex
societies in the region. But recent work has begun to upend many of the original conclusions, pointing to the need for a thorough review of the chronological foundation on which they rested, and calling for the re-analysis of ancient settlement patterns and infrastructure projects as proxies of the increasing centralization of authority during this key period of Andean prehistory.