| My research
interests include complex pre-Hispanic cultures of the Andes,
technology and organization of craft production, experimental
archaeology, mortuary archaeology, and archaeology of religion.
I have a number of ongoing
fieldwork and writing projects. In December, 2005, I completed
the first phase (field and laboratory seasons of 2003, 2004 and
2005) of the long-term, international Pachacamac Archaeological
Project, which has explored the "social foundations and environmental
contexts" of the pre-eminent pre-Hispanic religious center of
Pachacamac just south of the city of Lima. This project represents
the final phase of my life-long, comparative study of Andean religious/ceremonial
centers. Other centers I have investigated are Pampa Grande (Moche
V; 1973-78) and Sicán (Middle Sicán; 1978-present). I plan to
continue this interdisciplinary project for at least 10 years.
Project members and I are preparing a number of manuscripts on
the first long-term paleoenvironmental sequence to be established
for the Peruvian coast based on analysis of diatoms, pollens,
shells and sediments extracted from a lagoon, and the nature and
timing of ritual offerings, as well as social identity of their
performers. Yet another paper presents the results of interdisciplinary
analysis of some three dozen funerary bundles found in a large,
double-chambered tomb situated in front of the famed Temple of
Pachacamac. AMS-dating of different parts of these funerary bundles
(exterior and interior wrappings as well as preserved soft human
tissues), stable isotope analysis (O, C, N & Sr) of various body
parts (hair, bone, nail, etc.), mtDNA analysis of teeth, Mössbauer
spectroscopy of associated ceramics, detailed technical and stylistic
analysis of associated textiles and other studies are revealing
not only the complex “life history” of the dead and the tomb,
but also the lasting relationship between the dead and the living.
During a five-month period
from late July, 2006, the Sicán Archaeological Project under my
direction excavated an intact Middle Sicán elite cemetery (320
m2) at the west base of the Huaca Loro temple mound at the site
of Sican with the support of a grant from the Tokyo Broadcasting
System. This work was a continuation of the long-term, interdisciplinary
mortuary analysis that I began in 1990 to reconstruct Middle Sicán
social and political organization. During this season, twenty-one
burials and two cache offering pits were excavated. Currently
(June-December, 2007), our project team is conducting documentation,
analysis and conservation of these recovered remains at the National
Sicán Museum in Ferreñafe.
Related to my long-standing
interest in mortuary archaeology is the editing of a volume entitled
Living with the Dead in the Andes. This manuscript will be soon
submitted to the University of Arizona Press with which I have
a conditional publication contract.
In August, 2007, Craft Production
in Complex Societies: Multi-Crafting, Sequential Production, and
Producers under my editorship was published by the University
of Utah Press in its Foundations of Archaeology series.
The 2003-4 academic year was
spent as a Fellow in Pre-Columbian Studies at Dumbarton Oaks in
Washington, D.C. My fellowship project was to write a 500-page
synthesis of north Peru prehistory entitled Coastal Kingdoms of
the Andes: The Archaeology of Pre-Hispanic North Peru to be published
by Cambridge University Press in their Cambridge World Archaeology
series. The book represents the first major archaeological synthesis
of the north coast of Peru, one of the "primary centers of civilization"
of the world. The book will emphasize the multi-ethnic composition
and dynamics and creative dynamism between culture and environment
in discussing the civilizational process of the area. This book
will allow me to synthesize knowledge and insights accrued from
30 years of active archaeological research on the north coast
and, at the same time, fill a major void in our published literature.
For the past two years, I
have served as one of the two scientific advisers to a two year-long
exhibit, "Nasca, Wonder of the World: Messages Etched on the Desert
Floor." It was inaugurated a few days ago at the National Science
Museum, Tokyo. My duties included thematic design of the exhibit,
selection of seven scholars (from Germany, Italy, Japan, Peru
and US) to write thematic chapters for the exhibit catalog and
editing of their manuscripts. I am the principal editor of the
200-page catalog that was just recently published.
Also, I serve as the principal
scientific adviser for the traveling exhibit, "Sican: Royal Tombs
of Peru" that began its tour at the Nickle Arts Museum, University
of Calgary and is presently at the Museum of Civilization in Quebec.
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Shimada, Izumi (editor)
2007 Craft Production in Complex Societies:
Multi-Crafting, Sequential Production, and Producers. University
of Utah Press, Salt Lake City.
Shimada, Izumi, and Ursel Wagner
2007 Craft Production on the Pre-Hispanic North
Coast of Peru: A Holistic Approach and Its Results. In Archaeology
as Anthropology: Theoretical and Methodological Approaches,
edited by James Skibo, Michael Grave and Meriam Stark. University
of Arizona Press, Tucson.
Shimada, Izumi, Tadashi Baba, Ken-ichi Shinoda, and Ono, Masahiro
(editors)
2006 Nasca, Wonder of the World: Message
Etched on Desert Floor. Tokyo Broadcasting System and National
Science Museum, Tokyo.
Shimada, Izumi, Rafael Segura Llanos, Maria Rostworowski de Diez
Canseco, and Hirokatsu Watanabe
2005 Una Nueva Evaluacion de la Plaza
de los Perigrinos de Pachacamac: Aportes de la Primera Campana
2003 del Proyecto Arqueologico Pachacamac. In Arqueologia
de la Costa Central del Peru en los Periodos Tardios, edited
by Peter Eeckhout. Boletin del Instituto Frances de Estudios Andinos
33(3): 507-538.
Shimada, Izumi, and Jo Ann Griffin
2005 Precious Metal Objects of the Middle
Sican. In "Mysteries of the Ancient Ones." Special edition of
Scientific American 15(1): 80-89.
Shimada, Izumi, Shinoda, Ken-ichi, Bourget, Steve, Alva, Walter,
and Santiago Uceda
2005 MtDNA Analysis of Mochica and Sican
Populations of Pre-Hispanic Peru. In Biomolecular Archaeology
Genetic Approaches to the Past, edited by David Reed, pp. 61-92.
Occasional Paper No. 32. Center for Archaeological Investigations,
Southern Illinois University, Carbondale.
Shimada, Izumi
2005 Experimental Archaeology. In Handbook
of Archaeological Methods, Vol. I, edited by Herbert D.G. Maschner
and Christopher Chippindale, pp. 603-642. AltaMira Press, Lanham,
MD.
Shimada, Izumi, Shinoda, Ken-ichi, Farnum, Julie, Corruccini,
Robert S., and Hirokatsu Watanabe
2004 An Integrated Analysis of Pre-Hispanic
Mortuary Practices: A Middle Sican Case Study. Current Anthropology
45(3): 369-402.
Shimada, Izumi
2002 Late Prehispanic Coastal States (in Japanese).
In Illustrated History of the Inca Empire (Japanese edition
of The Inca World: The Development of Pre-Columbian Peru,
A.D. 1000-1534, edited by Laura Laurencich Minelli). Translated
by Yoshio Masuda and Kazuyo Takeuchi, pp. 49-110. Toyo-Shorin,
Tokyo.
2001 Late Moche Urban Craft Production:
A First Approximation. In Moche Art and Archaeology in Ancient
Peru, edited by Joanne Pillsbury, pp. 177-205. National Gallery
of Art, Studies in History of Art 63. Washington, D.C.
2000 Late Prehispanic Coastal States.
In The Inca World: The Development of Pre-Columbian Peru,
A.D. 1000-1534, edited by Laura Laurencich Minelli, pp. 49-110.
University of Oklahoma Press, Norman.
1999 The Evolution of Andean Diversity:
Regional Formations, ca. 500 B.C. - A.D. 600. In Cambridge
History of Native Peoples of the Americas, edited by Frank
Salomon and Stuart Schwartz, pp. 350-517. Cambridge University
Press, Cambridge.
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