Alan Covey – Research

A 16th century estate in Peru will offer insight into how expanding empires subjugate people and appropriate their resources to promote a cause. Kylie Quave, an SMU graduate student in archaeology, has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student Fellowship to conduct archaeological fieldwork and research in southeastern Peru, the heart of the ancient Inca empire.

The 10-month fellowship begins in August 2009. During that time, Quave intends to excavate residences on the estate of 16th-century emperor Huayna Capac. She hopes to shed light on the Inca elites who lived there and supervised the estate’s daily operations, immigrant laborers and land, which had been appropriated by the nobility.

“The Incas transformed the rural landscape around their capital into immense sources of private wealth,” Quave says. “I hope to contribute to a global understanding of how empires use people and resources to promote their cause and how local communities respond to the imperial campaign.”

During her fellowship, Quave will collaborate with local archaeologists in the field and laboratory, along with local historians in regional and national archives.

With experience as an SMU teaching assistant and as a researcher and docent for the Dallas Museum of Art, she also plans to work with the local community to create educational programming for children and adults.

“We will bring together our diverse perspectives to understand how the Inca developed private investments in the rural heartland using a multiethnic labor force,” she says. “The community will be involved in the preservation of its past.”

Quave, a native of Brooksville, Florida, earned her Bachelor’s degree in art history in 2005 from Emory University. In SMU’s Dedman College, where Quave earned her Master’s degree in 2008, she has taken courses in archaeological method and theory, and previously has done fieldwork in Bolivia and Peru.

“Kylie’s dissertation will move beyond well-known Inca country palaces like Machu Picchu, developing valuable perspectives on how royal families developed and managed private resources that were key to the economic maintenance of the largest native civilization to develop in the Americas,” says Alan Covey, assistant professor of anthropology and Quave’s dissertation adviser. “Her success is the latest for SMU’s doctoral program in anthropology, which recruits talented students and prepares them to make a professional impact early in their careers.”

Graduate student Amanda Aland was awarded a Fulbright in 2008, also to conduct archaeological fieldwork and research in Peru.

Quave is one of 1,450 U.S. citizens selected to study abroad this year through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright Student Program. More than 40 SMU students have been awarded the fellowship in the last 35 years. — Sarah Hanan

Amanda Aland, an SMU archaeology graduate student in Dedman College, and a team of students working under her direction in Peru, in 2008 unearthed evidence that the Incas left their mark after conquering the Chimú empire in the 15th century.

Now Aland has received a prestigious Fulbright U.S. Student fellowship to conduct further archaeological fieldwork and research in Peru.

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In March 2009, Aland will return to a site on Peru’s northern coast, called Santa Rita B, where she spent several months last year excavating with the support of a National Science Foundation grant.

Slideshow: Aland’s Peru field work

“We found Chimú pottery and architecture that show Inca influences,” she says, in addition to centuries-old animal matter and human remains.

During her 10-month Fulbright fellowship, Aland hopes to learn the extent of the Incas’ influence on the Chimú people through further excavation and laboratory analysis of her findings.

“We want to piece together how the two empires interacted,” she says. “Did they go to war, or make peace living under new rules? We always can learn from the past.”

Aland, a Dallas native, earned a Bachelor’s degree in Spanish from the University of Southern California in 2004. At SMU, where she earned a Master’s degree in anthropology in 2006, she has studied archaeological theory, methods and grant writing while directing summer field research in Peru.

“Amanda is developing important new perspectives on the expansion of the Inca empire,” says Alan Covey, assistant professor of anthropology and Aland’s dissertation adviser. “Peru’s north coast was an important provincial region, but one that is still not well understood by archaeologists. Her research stands to make a valuable contribution.”

Aland is one of 1,450 U.S. citizens selected to study abroad this year through the U.S. State Department’s Fulbright U.S. Student Program, and one of 40 SMU students who have been awarded the fellowship in the last 35 years. — Sarah Hanan