Branden Cesare Rizzuto

My research explores the possibly shifting ontological basis of human-metal interactions as relates to transformations in socio-political organization and religious practices on the North Coast of Peru during the Middle Horizon Period (600-1000 CE). I will examine more than 2700 metallurgical materials recovered from the Late Moche/Transitional ceremonial centre of Huaca Colorada (650-900 cal. CE) in the Jequetepeque Valley. Technical and spatial analyses of these materials, as well as provenance studies of ores and imported metal products, will permit a reconstruction of the chaine operatoires and larger socio-material assemblages that underwrote metallurgy at Huaca Colorada. Synchronic contextual analyses will shed light on the relationships between Andean ontologies, metallurgy, regional resource acquisition networks, and local ritual economies. Diachronic analyses based on Bayesian chronological modelling will test whether the introduction of arsenic bronze technologies correlates with the socio-political and religious transformations documented at Huaca Colorada and elsewhere on the North Coast during the Middle Horizon Period, and how these developments assembled the social relations that characterized metallurgy at Huaca Colorada. Adopting relational and post-anthropocentric theoretical perspectives, my investigations will provide invaluable insights on how historically particular ontologies and religious institutions mediated large-scale transformations in past metallurgical technologies.