Carla Hernández Garavito

Reimagining Colonialism: A Local History of Community and Empire in the Peruvian Andes Between the 15th and 18th centuries’ investigates the Inka (1450-1532 CE) and Spanish empires (1532-1821 CE) conquest of the Andes through the archaeological and historical study of a single Andean community, the people of Huarochir’ (Lima, Peru). My research expands transconquest archaeology and is driven by the question: what if the Inka and Spanish were an addition to local history rather than the filter through which we discuss the diverse and complex communities that inhabited the Andes? Thus, Reimagining Colonialism grounds global processes on a local scale, challenging approaches that effectively erase indigenous identities and diversity in the archaeological study of colonialism. Theoretically, this project is grounded on indigenous and decolonizing approaches which level the tools of western academia to center indigenous storytelling in research. Methodologically, I ground my work on archaeology, archival research, and spatial modeling tools to level the potential of digital visualizations to recover indigenous experiences and practices on different scales. By entangling archaeological and historical sources through spatial modeling, I investigate how indigenous communities fit Inka and Spanish policies into their local landscapes and histories.