Wednesday Part 1: What am I doing here?

It seems like a good time to explain myself. Many of you have heard this before, but I need to practice saying it and getting all the pieces in the right order. I'm trying to figure out how to be concise, but that doesn't seem to be working. If you have any suggestions, I'd be grateful!

I'm here in Bolivia (and Peru next ) doing research for my Masters Thesis for a degree in Anthropology with a specialization in Bioarchaeology. I have a passion for Andean archaeology and that's how it all ties together. I am studying the economic system of a pre-Inkan group, who lived in what is now northwestern Bolivia and southern Peru, called the Tiwanaku. This culture centered around the city or ceremonial center of Tiwanaku (also spelled Tiahuanaco) and rose to power around 600AD. By 800AD they were expanding, and colonists settled in regions with different ecosystems to capitalize on the resources available there. One such region was the Moquegua Valley in southern Peru.

My goal is to study the travel patterns of individual colonists in Moquegua. To do this I'm going to use chemistry. Humans are constantly rebuilding our bodies, and all this new tissue is made up of what we eat and what we drink. As hair grows, the oxygen contained within it is largely derived from drinking water. The water of any location will have a chemical signature, based on the distance from the coast and other conditions. So, hair provides a record of where people have been (based on the ratios of stable oxygen isotopes). This record isn't exactly precise to location, but should give a general idea of distance from the coast, which is helpful considering that the valley where these folks lived changes altitude by thousands of feet between the coast and the Andes. This technique is being used now forensically, to help determine where unidentified murder victims might be from. I was inspired by that idea and decided to apply it to archaeology.

The other thing I'm doing is looking at bone chemistry to see what people have been eating. By looking at the ratios of carbon and nitrogen isotopes, I will be able to tell if individuals have been eating marine foods (only available on the coast), or corn (only available around Moquegua and environments of similar altitude), and hopefully lake fish (from around Lake Titicaca). Once I know this, I can combine the record of where people have been with what they've been eating to talk about their economic system.

My project here will involve the collection of water samples, to determine the chemical, oxygen isotope, signature of locations where the Moquegua colonists might have traveled. Then I'll gather samples of hair and bone from individuals who have been recovered from archaeological sites around Moquegua (that part just involves working with collections in a museum). Once I get all this gathered up, I'll go to Lima to arrange for permits to bring it all back to our labs at Chico for analysis and write it all into a thesis by next spring.

See, I told you I don't know how to say this briefly! Let me know if you have any suggestions for shortening it up or any questions about my work.

Karen