The Andes

Vanderbilt Unviersity’s Department of Anthropology has developed a particular strength in Andean studies with six full-time faculty, two research associate, one lecturer, and numerous graduate students. Faculty archaeological research projects focus on the oldest human occupation in the Andes, the relationship between ritual, religion, monumentality, and social complexity, the rise of complex societies and urbanism in the Bolivian Andes; the role that landscape and land use played in the negotiation of new social rules at early Peruvian colonial sites; and violence-related trauma and the bioarchaeological marchers of symbolic violence during the Wari Empire. Sociocultural research includes state transformation in Bolivia, mortuary practices, and modern political violence in Colombia and Bolivia. Research is supported by major grants from the National Science Foundation and National Endowment for the Humanities and among the CLACX scholars working on the Andes is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Science. CLACX also co-sponsors a number of the department’s invited lectures.

Faculty Working in the Andes

• Carwil Bjork-James
• Tom Dillehay
• Leslie Gill
• Patricia Netherly
• Kasia Szremski
• Tiffiny Tung
• Steve Wernke

Courses in Andean Studies

• ANTH 2106 – Culture and Power in Latin America
• ANTH 3160 – Anthropology and Archaeology of Communities
• ANTH 3132 – Social Movements
• ANTH 3161/6161 – Colonial Encounters in the Americas
• ANTH 3130 – Andean Culture and Society
• ANTH 2231/5231 – Ancient Andean Civilizations
• ANTH 2230 – South American Archaeology
• ANTH 3250 – The Inca Empire
• ANTH 2370 – Life, Death, and the Human Body
• ANTH 4373 – Health and Disease in Ancient Populations
• ANTH 4152 – Activism and Social Change: Theory, Experience, and Practice
• ANTH 5220/2220 – Human Landscapes
• ANTH 8100 – Political Violence
• ANTH 8311 – Violence and Its Embodiments in the Past and Present
• ANTH 8310 – The Anthropology of Death: Body, Place, and Memory
• ANTH 8211 – Space, Place and Landscape
• ANTH 8220 – The Historical Archaeology of Latin America
• ANTH 8240 – Seminar in South American Archaeology and Ethnohistory (GRAD)
• ANTH 8010-1 – Special Topics: History/Culture of the Andes