David Chicoine

PERSONAL INFORMATION

Assistant Professor and Anthropology Undergraduate Advisor
Department of Geography and Anthropology
Louisiana State University
Baton Rouge, LA 70803
Phone: 225-578-8105 ~ Fax: 225-578-4420
E-mail: dchico@lsu.edu

EDUCATIONAL BACKGROUND

Ph.D., University of East Anglia, 2006.

INTERESTS

Click HERE to visit the Caylan Archaeological Project website

Andean archaeology
Coastal Peru
Early urbanism
Material culture

SELECTED PUBLICATIONS

2007  Virtual Space, Education and Cultural Heritage: The Latin American Collections at the Simon Fraser University Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology. The Midden 39 (3): 18-21. [Vancouver] [http://www.sfu.ca/las/news/DavidChicoine.html]

2006  Early Horizon Architecture at Huambacho, Nepeña Valley, Peru. Journal of Field Archaeology 31 (2): 1-22.

2004  The Moche Presence in the Nepeña Valley: A View from Huambacho. Proceedings of the symposium Southern Moche: Understanding the First Expansionist State on the North Coast of Peru presented at the 69th Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. [http://www.anthro.umontreal.ca/colloques/2004/SAA04/index.html]

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES

I study the complex societies that developed on the coast of Peru and their dynamics. My research has focused on the design and use of architectural spaces, modes of social interactions, feasting, funerary practices, visual arts, and religious symbolism. Most recently, I have been conducting fieldwork in Nepeña, an important valley of the Department of Ancash on the north-central coast of Peru. I have carried out excavations at the 1st millennium BCE elite center of Huambacho to understand changes in public architecture and the social organization of coastal populations. At the moment, I am elaborating a long-term research program focusing on the emergence of urbanism in this region. Through fieldwork at the early urban settlement of Caylán, the project adopts a political ecological perspective and considers the relationships between human strategies, environmental conditions and the development of urban formations. The project emphasizes some critical aspects of the political ecology of Peruvian urban formations including the impact of urban growth on local environmental conditions, the management of irrigation networks, risk buffering strategies related to episodic natural events and disasters (ENSO), the incorporation of environmental events into local ideological and religious systems, and the strategic manipulation of resources to achieve political goals. Phase 1 of the Caylán Project is due to begin in 2009 with the initial mapping of the urban settlement, the survey of the regional settings and the sampling of stratified archaeological deposits.

COURSES TAUGHT

World Archaeology
Indian Civilizations of Middle and South America