Fall 2022 Faculty Spotlight

I am an Assistant Teaching Professor in the Department of Anthropology at NAU. I have a long-standing interest in Latin America and ancient Andean civilization. In 2010, I began what would become a long-term research project in the Lambayeque region of the north coast of Peru, one of the two centers of primary cultural development in the Central Andes. My fieldwork and research focus on academically overlooked, or ‘underrepresented’ archaeological groups. As such, the primary aim of my work is to expose underlying social and economic relationships that characterize this region’s dynamic past through the lens of those who lived and worked together and interacted across social boundaries. Such complexities underly the phenomenon I call “economic complementarity”, a term that refers to the mutually interdependent production, distribution, consumption of goods, and the complementary social relationships that support them.

Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológica Gallinazo del Norte (or PIAGN)

In July 2022, I launched a new long-term interdisciplinary research project on the outskirts of the Pomac Historical-Ecological Sanctuary (https://whc.unesco.org/en/ tentativelists/6419/) that continues to expand on these previous works.

The Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológica Gallinazo del Norte (or PIAGN)  is working to clarify the broader role of the first-millennium regional polity I recognize as the Northern Gallinazo, through expanded research on their multi-crafting industries, mining, and water management practices. An important part of this work is the endeavor to understand how social and economic relationships between the Northern Gallinazo and other first-millennium peoples persisted despite periodic climate disasters (flooding, drought and migrating sand dunes) in this dynamic part of the world.

Read More about Dr. Sharp’s projects and Peru Field Program!