Chercheurs

Archeologie / CONRAD, GEOFFREY

ltconrad

Position

Anthropologist,
Professor of Anthropology at Indiana University-Bloomington, USA,
Director of the William Hammond Mathers Museum.

Thèmes de recherche

Caribbean Archaeology; Peruvian (Central Andean) Archaeology; Comparative Ancient Civilizations; Museum Anthropology .

In 1997, after a quarter-century of work in the Central Andes, Pr Conrad began excavating in the Dominican Republic on the Caribbean island of Hispaniola (also known as Santo Domingo). He is studying the development of the Taíno chiefdoms encountered by Christopher Columbus and the early Spanish explorers of the Caribbean. In addition to being an example of the pristine development of complex chiefdoms, the Taínos were the first American Indians to undergo conquest by Europeans, and many of the practices that characterized the Spanish conquests of Mexico and Peru were first employed in the Caribbean.

He is concentrating on roughly the last 500 years before the arrival of Columbus, and he uses both archaeological data and written records dating to the early colonial era. He is trying to determine how practices and institutions described by early European observers like Bartolomé de Las Casas and Gonzalo Fernández de Oviedo y Valdés are reflected in the ground (and in some cases why the archaeological data seem to contradict the written records). The archaeological data come from terrestrial excavations, underwater investigations, and studies of rock art.

His ongoing studies in the Caribbean are in many ways an extension of his previous work in Peru. For example, he has a longstanding interest in the role of religious beliefs and institutions in prehistoric cultural evolution. In Peru he examined this issue in the context of the development of prehistoric states. In the Caribbean he is exploring the question in the context of the rise of chiefdoms.

He also believes it is vitally important for anthropologists and archaeologists to explain what they do, and why it is important, to the public. He is particularly interested in museums as means of communicating with the public. In addition to his archaeological research and teaching, Pr Conrad directs the William Hammond Mathers Museum, Indiana University's museum of world cultures, and teaches courses in museum studies.

Prix et récompenses

Publications

· 2001 (with J.W. Foster and C.D. Beeker) Organic artifacts from the Manantial de La Aleta, Dominican Republic: preliminary observations and interpretations. Journal of Caribbean Archaeology 2.
· 1998 Pre-columbian civilizations. In Latin America: Perspectives on a Region, 2nd edition. Jack W. Hopkins, Ed. New York: Holmes & Meier.
· 1997 (with J.W. Foster et al.) Images of conquest. Archaeology 50(4).
· 1993 Domestic architecture of the Estuquiña phase. In Domestic Architecture, Ethnicity, and Complementarity in the South-Central Andes. M.S. Aldenderfer, Ed. Iowa City:University of Iowa Press .
· 1992 Ed. (with A.A.Demarest) Ideology and Pre-Columbian Civilizations.. Santa Fe: School of American Research Press.
· 1990 Farfan, General Pacatnamu, and the dynastic history of Chimor. In The Northern Dynasties: Kingship and Statecraft in Chimor. M.E. Moseley and A. Cordy-Collins, Eds. Washington, D.C.:Dumbarton Oaks Center for Pre-Columbian Studies.