Framing the Local within the Regional: Current Research in the Cusco Region, Peru

Cusco, Peru is best known as the navel of the Inca universe, but it was also home to postglacial high altitude hunter-gatherers, a network of Formative villages, Wari imperial colonies, rivals to early Inca elites, and a major locus of Spanish colonial rule. Coming out of a prolific phase of regional survey programs, the Cusco region has seen an explosion of problem-based excavations and analytical laboratory-based research that cuts across disciplinary lines. These projects are refining our understandings of biological, economic, and sociopolitical development in the region from the Archaic to Colonial periods. This symposium brings together scholars from diverse sociocultural and biological perspectives to explore patterns of change over the short term and longue durée. Papers approach themes such as migration, ties connecting Cusco to the outside world, the development of multiple and changing political agendas, and how local populations navigated all of the above.