Tamia Viteri Toledo

Power and Status Differentiation in the Construction of the Body in Funeral Urns of the Amazonian Napo Phase

My research project focuses in the construction and representation of the body in funeral ceramic urns of an Amazonian pre-columbian culture (Napo Phase) in the Upper Amazon of Ecuador. I seek to understand this material as a mean of visual communication, where the body is conceived as a support not only physical, but also symbolic on which certain social regulations are embodied, becoming the best strategy to exercise control and power over the individual as well as transgressions to rules.

The analysis integrates different vessels shapes such as anthropomorphic, zoomorphic and hybrid figures in differentiation to non-figurative urns. This stylistic variability may also provide clues about the Napo social-political structure, where processes of identity construction and status differentiation, may highlight certain social tensions or conflicts. Therefore, I try to understand how social interactions are shaped between human and non humans agents of their symbolic ecology, product of asymmetric and power relations.

since 2020
Ph.D. in Archaeology, Bonn Center for Dependency and Slavery Studies, University of Bonn, Germany

2012–2017
B.A. in Anthropology with a Major in Archaeology, Catholic University of Ecuador

since 2020
Research Associate in Research Group The Archaeology of Dependency (ArchDepth): Resources, Power, and Status Differentiation, University of Bonn, Germany

2020
Archaeologyst of the Metropolitan Heritage Institute, Quito, Ecuador

2018–2019
Research Associate, School of Anthropology, Catholic University of Ecuador

2014–2017
Research Assistant, School of Anthropology, Catholic University of Ecuador