The UMMAA is pleased to present Dr. Aleksa Alaica, Izaak Walton Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Alberta, who will speak on Friday, January 21, 12-1 p.m., as part of the online UMMAA Brown Bag Lecture Series.
This presentation, Food, Trade, and Ritual: Human-Animal Interactions among the Moche of North Coastal Peru, seeks to explore an understudied aspect of the Moche political economy: their use and depiction of different marine and terrestrial species as subsistence sources, social capital, and symbols. Alaica uses iconographic, zooarchaeological, and isotopic data from the Late Moche (CE 600-900) site of Huaca Colorada to examine the role of wild and domestic animal species in differently facilitating the interaction between coastal communities and long-distance exchange with the highlands. Results do not support the unilateral control of Moche elites over local and hinterland communities but rather strong local continuity in the depiction of species and the butchery and sharing of their remains in large-scale feasts.
Zoom Link:
https://umich.zoom.us/j/95567379046
The Museum’s Brown Bag Lecture Series is free and open to the public.
