- Steve Wernke
- Assistant Professor
- Department of Anthropology
- Vanderbilt University
- Nashville, TN
- s.wernke@vanderbilt.edu
- Office: 615/343-2518
As an archaeologist and ethnohistorian of the Andean region of South America, my research interests center on the dynamics of political and economic organization, religion, land use, and imperial-local relations in both prehispanic and colonial contexts. I am especially interested in how community organization acts as a mediator between local interest groups and expansionist states (such as the Inka and the Spanish colonial states), and how landscape acts as a mediator between humans and the environment. Methodologically, much of my work to aims to synthesize archaeological and documentary data sets in a common, GIS-based spatial framework. My most recent research investigates the local experience of missionization during the early years following the Spanish invasion of Peru. To date, most of my studies have been based in the Colca Valley, a major highland valley of the south central Andean highlands.
Photos of our 2008 excavations at the early mission settlement of Malata have been posted here.