1st Edition

Excavating Pedregal Archaeological Explorations of Conquest and Daily Life in Ancient Perú

By Robyn E. Cutright Copyright 2026
210 Pages 67 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

210 Pages 67 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

210 Pages 67 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

Excavating Pedregal offers a new synthesis of household-level experiences of imperial conquest on the north coast of Perú, using excavations at the Late Intermediate Period farming community of Pedregal as an engaging case study of archaeological research in action. Alongside this central case study, short essays by other archaeological stakeholders highlight diverse experiences and... Read more

Introduction: What Is an Archaeologist and How Did I Become One? 1 What Do Archaeologists Want to Know about the Past? 2 Reasoning like an Archaeologist: Connecting Questions to Evidence 3 Who Cares about Archaeology and Why? Archaeology’s Stakeholders 4 How Do You Know Where to Dig? Surveying Regions, Landscapes, and Sites 5 Brushing Dirt Off of Other Dirt: Excavating Archaeological Sites 6 Making Sense of Time, Space, and Artifacts 7 Corn, Fish, and Conquest: Analyzing Plant and Animal Remains 8 Tools of the Trade: Ceramic Pots and Stone Implements as Culinary Technologies9 Reading the Bones: Bioarchaeology of Cuisine, Identity, and Experience under Chimú Rule 10 Conclusions, Conversations, and New Directions

Biography

Robyn E. Cutright is W. George Matton Professor of Anthropology and Latin American Studies at Centre College, Danville, Kentucky. Her research focuses on the local experiences of Chimú conquest on the north coast of Perú, using daily culinary practice as a window onto broader regional processes of change. This research has been supported by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the Social Science Research Council, a Fulbright Fellowship, the Curtiss T. and Mary G. Brennan Foundation, and the Rust Family Foundation. She is co-editor of Ancient Households on the North Coast of Perú, and author of The Story of Food in the Human Past: How What We Ate Made Us Who We Are. She is also editor of Ñawpa Pacha: The Journal of the Institute of Andean Studies. Cutright received her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Pittsburgh and her B.A. in Anthropology and Spanish from Lawrence University.