Laura Steele
PhD Candidate
Anthropology
Title of Dissertation : The Ripple Effect of Imperialism – Understanding Foodways, Community and Identity on the Margins of an Empire
Imperialism has a dramatic impact on the lives of directly colonized and subjected peoples. Scholars have demonstrated that this impact takes a variety of forms depending on the proximity of the imperial center, imperial goals, the surrounding geography, and abundance of natural resources, among other factors. Limited research has focused on how peoples on the margins of empires responded to imperial processes on their borders. Laura’s dissertation project explores the effects of imperialism on Indigenous peoples living along the frontier of the Spanish expansion in west-central Argentina. She focusesher research on how theseIndigenous peoples obtained animals, prepared them, and then discarded their leftovers before and after the Spanish invasion. She analyzes animal bone material from archaeological sites in this region to reconstruct these foodways through time and identify the waysIndigenous peoples adapted to, resisted, and/or benefitted from imperial expansion. She also uses radiocarbon dating to construct a timeline of events in this region. 
