Michelle Elizabeth Young

MICHELLE YOUNG, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee, was approved funding for a Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship to aid research and writing on “Beyond the Horizon: Pericentric Complexity in the Chavín Phenomenon at Atalla, Peru.” This book project challenges popular theoretical frameworks for modeling the relationship between interaction and the emergence of social complexity. Instead, this research champions the use of pericentric models that center community as the subject of study. One of the earliest “civilizations” in the Andes is known as the Chavín Phenomenon (850-550 BCE), characterized by villages with monumental temples that shared iconography, engaged in long-distance trade, and developed new craft technologies. But what was the “Chavín Phenomenon” and how did this complex social formation develop over such a large geographical area? This book answers this question through systematic excavations at the megalithic site of Atalla in the Huancavelica region of Peru. Careful attention to chronological sequence allows for the disentanglement of the Chavín Phenomenon, which has traditionally been understood as an archaeological “horizon,” into several discrete processes. Clarifying the multi-scalar and historically particular nature of human interaction during this period demonstrates that the cooperation between communities was contingent on a shared religious system. This approach produces a vision of the Chavín Phenomenon as the material result of translocal, imagined communities. The emerging frameworks applied in this ancient Andean case study are useful for conceptualizing complex interactions in non-state societies elsewhere.