Spring Colloquium: Dr. Kylie Quave

"Household, Faction, and Political Economy: Developing the Inka Heartland (Maras, Cuzco, Peru)”

Reception outside McMillan G052 immediately following talk.

Dr. Kylie Quave is currently with Beloit College. Kylie uses archaeology and ethnohistory to reconstruct state development and its impacts on people’s lives. Her interests lie in understanding how states and empires in prehistory and recent history organize their economies and use their constituents to uphold social inequalities. Kylie’s research focuses on ancient domestic economies, how they articulate with larger political economies in states, and what that tells us about community cooperation and resistance to imperial rule. She currently carries out this research in highland Peru, focusing on the pre-Inca to Spanish Colonial periods (c. 1000-1700 CE). Her dissertation was a study of forcibly migrated retainer populations serving Inca nobles near the imperial capital, and sought to understand how labor was coerced through multiple strategies. A recent development of this work has been the excavation of households within a neighboring community allied with the Inca, to contrast migrant experiences with those of cooperative locals.

Kylie applies her research interests to better understanding human prehistory and history in the classroom, with relevant connections drawn to the real world. She challenges students to use the archaeological past as a harbinger of what’s to come and as a critical study of how we interpret our present. Kylie is teaching courses on the overview of human prehistory and quantitative research methods. She emphasizes student training in her Peruvian projects, co-publishes and co-presents work with students, and encourages independent research.