Nicola Sharratt
Associate Professor Anthropology- Education
Ph.D. University of Illinois, Chicago
MA University of Illinois, Chicago
BA University of Cambridge
- Specializations
Archaeology, Andean South America, Museum Studies
- Biography
After receiving her Ph.D. in Anthropology from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2011, Dr. Sharratt held post-doctoral fellowships at the Field Museum of Natural History and the American Museum of Natural History/Bard Graduate Center. She joined the anthropology department at Georgia State University in 2014.
Her archaeological research explores periods of sociopolitical transformation, focusing in particular on processes often glossed as state collapse. Her work focuses on the peripheries of ancient states, interrogating how radical transformations in regional politics play out in local contexts, and how communities of non-elites are impacted by and respond to those macro-scale shifts. Since 2006, she has led an archaeological project in southern Peru that examines 500 years of the aftermath of the fragmentation, circa 1000 CE, of the Tiwanaku polity, recognized as one of the earliest states in Andean South America; a half millennium that coincided with a prolonged drought across the region. Sharratt’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, National Geographic, Fulbright, the Brennan Foundation, and the Archaeological Institute of America.Sharratt’s published work explores the impac
t of political ‘collapse’ and environmental stress on craft production, constructions of identity, subsistence practices, community organization, and collective ritual practice as well as centuries-long processes of resilience, ethnogenesis, and the reformulation of local intercommunity interaction networks. Her publications also reflect her research utilizing compositional analyses of archaeological material, her interest in public characterizations of archaeology, and her background in museum anthropology. She is author of ‘Carrying Coca: 1500 years of Andean chuspas’ (BGC/Yale University Press 2014) a short book accompanying an exhibition of the same name that wove together the long and complex stories of Andean textiles and coca leaves to explore how craft objects are as embedded in, affected by, and responsive to social, political, and economic change.Undergraduate and graduate students have been critical members of all the excavation teams working with Dr. Sharratt and she looks forward to continuing to provide field and laboratory opportunities to students. She co-leads the graduate level concentration in Museum Anthropology at GSU.
- Publications
Books & Edited Sections
2014 Sharratt, N. Carrying Coca: 1500 Years of Andean Chuspas. Bard Graduate Center: New York. Distributed by Yale University Press.
2022 Sharratt, N. & D. Grogan, co-editors, The Dig: Archaeology in the Public Eye, special thematic section for the SAA Archaeological Record https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?i=734721
Peer-Reviewed Journal Articles
2021 Ogalde, J. P*. & N. Sharratt. ‘Ritualidad Fúnebre e Identidad en el Quero y el Tazón Tumilaca de Moquegua, Per.’ Boletín Chileno de Arte Precolombino 26(2): 15-29.
2019 Sharratt, N. ‘Tiwanaku’s Legacy: a Chronological Reassessment of the terminal Middle Horizon in the Moquegua Valley, Peru.’ Latin American Antiquity 30(3): 529-549. https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2019.39
2019 Sharratt, N., S. deFrance & P. R. Williams ‘Spanish Colonial Networks of Production: Earthenware Storage Vessels from the Peruvian Wine Industry.’ International Journal of Historical Archaeology 23(3): 651-677. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10761-018-0480-3
2019 Lowman, S. A*., N. Sharratt, B. L. Turner ‘Bioarchaeology of Social Transition: a diachronic study of health at Tumilaca la Chimba, Peru.’ International Journal of Osteoarchaeology. 29(1): 62-72. https://doi.org/10.1002/oa.2713
2017 Sharratt, N. ‘Steering Clear of the Dead: Avoiding Ancestors in the Moquegua Valley, Peru.’ American Anthropologist 119(4): 645-661. https://doi.org/10.1111/aman.12944
2017 Parker, B. J. and N. Sharratt. ‘Fragments of the Past: Applying Microarchaeological Techniques to Use Surfaces at Tumilaca La Chimba, Moquegua, Peru.’ Advances in Archaeological Practice 5(1): 71-92. https://doi.org/10.1017/aap.2016.3
2016 Sharratt, N. ‘Collapse and Cohesion: Building Community in the Aftermath of Tiwanaku State Breakdown.’ World Archaeology 48(1): 144-163. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00438243.2015.1110043
2015 Sharratt, N., M. Golitko & P. R. Williams. ‘Pottery Production, Regional Exchange and State Collapse during the Middle Horizon (A.D. 500-1000): LA-ICP-MS analyses of Tiwanaku pottery in the Moquegua Valley, Perú.’ Journal of Field Archaeology 40(4): 397-412. https://doi.org/10.1179/2042458214Y.0000000001
2010 Sutter, R. and N. Sharratt. ‘Continuity and Transformation during the Terminal Middle Horizon (A.D. 950-1150): A Bioarchaeological Assessment of Tumilaca Origins within the Middle Moquegua Valley, Peru.’ Latin American Antiquity 21(1): 67-86. https://www.jstor.org/stable/25766979
2009 Sharratt, N., M. Golitko, P. R. Williams, and L. Dussubieux. ‘Ceramic Production during the Middle Horizon: Wari and Tiwanaku Clay Procurement in the Moquegua Valley, Peru.’ Geoarchaeology 24(6): 792-820. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/gea.20288
Peer-Reviewed Book Chapters
2020 Sharratt, N. Catastrophe and Collapse in the late pre-Hispanic Andes: responding for half a millennium to political fragmentation and climate stress. In F. Riede & P. Sheets (eds) Going Forward by Looking Back: Archaeological Perspectives on Socio-Ecological Crisis, Response, and Collapse: 273-303. New York: Berghahn Books.
2020 Sharratt, N. ‘Rejecting, Reinventing, Resituating: a Diachronic Perspective on Ritual in the Aftermath of Tiwanaku State Collapse.’ In J. Murphy (ed.). Rituals, Collapse, and Radical Transformation in Archaic States: 123-146. New York: Routledge.
2016 Sharratt, N. ‘Crafting a Response to Collapse: Ceramic and Textile Production in the Wake of Tiwanaku State Breakdown. In R. Faulseit (ed). Beyond Collapse: CAI Occasional Paper no. 42: 407-430. Carbondale Il: SIU Press.
2016 Golitko, M., N. Sharratt & P. R. Williams. ‘Open Cell Ablation of Killke and Inka Pottery from the Cuzco Area: Museum collections as repositories of provenience information.’ In L. Dussubieux, M. Golitko & B. Gratuze (eds). Recent Advances in Laser Ablation ICP-MS for Archaeology: 27-52. New York: Springer.
2015 Sharratt, N. ‘Viviendo y Muriendo en medio de la efervescencia política: excavaciones en una aldea Tiwanaku terminal (950-1150 D.C) del valle de Moquegua, Perú.’ In A. Korpisaari & J. Chacama R. (eds). El Horizonte Medio en los Andes Centro Sur: Nuevos aportes sobre la arqueología del sur de Perú, norte de Chile y altiplano de Bolivia: 201-223. Lima, Peru: Travaux de l'Institut Français d'Etudes Andines (IFEA).
Other Publications
2022 Sharratt, N. & D. Grogan ‘Introduction: Reflections on Archaeology in Popular Media.’ In The Dig: Archaeology in the Public Eye, special thematic section for the SAA Archaeological Record https://mydigitalpublication.com/publication/?m=16146&i=734721&p=18&ver=html5
2015 Piscitelli, M., S. Chacaltana Cortez, N. Sharratt, M. Golitko & P. R. Williams. ‘Inferring Ceramic Production, Social Interaction, and Political Dynamics in the Moquegua Valley through Geochemical Analysis. In I. C. Druc (ed). Ceramic Analysis in the Andes. Proceedings of the Session on Andean Ceramic Characterization, Society for American Archaeology Annual Meeting 2014, Austin Texas: 103-121. Blue Mounds WI: Deep University Press.
2013 K. Keramidas & N. Sharratt. ‘Weaving Stories between the Material, Immaterial and Ephemeral: Designing Digital Interactives for Socially Complex Objects in an Exhibition Setting.’ In L. Levitt (ed). Tokens and Talismans in digital spaces: meaning in the absence of materiality. The New Everyday, MediaCommons.
2012 Sharratt, N., P. R. Williams, M. C. Lozada, and J. Starbird. ‘Late Tiwanaku Mortuary Patterns in the Moquegua Drainage, Peru: Excavations at the Tumilaca la Chimba Cemetery.’ In A. Vranich, E. Klarich & C. Stanish (eds). Advances in Titicaca Basin Archaeology III: 193-203. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology Publications.
2011 Sharratt, N. ‘Identity Negotiation during Tiwanaku State Collapse.’ In L. Amundsen-Meyer, N. Engel & S. Pickering (eds) Identity Crisis: Archaeological Perspectives on Social Identity. Proceedings of the 42nd (2010) Annual Chacmool Conference: 167-177. University of Calgary: Calgary, Alberta, Canada.
2009 Chacaltana-Cortez, S. and N. Sharratt. ‘International Collaboration and US Training; Peruvian and British Perspectives.’ SAA Archaeological Record 9(4): 19-20.
Book Reviews
2022 Review of Archaeologies of Empire: local participants and imperial trajectories. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, edited by Anna L. Boozer, Bleda S. Düring, and Bradley J. Parker, 2020. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Antiquity
2021 Review of Rituals of the Past: Prehispanic and Colonial Case Studies in Andean Archaeology, edited by Silvana A. Rosenfeld and Stefanie L. Bautista, 2017. Ethnohistory 68(1): 155-156.
2018 Review of Crisis to Collapse. The Archaeology of Social Breakdown, edited by Tim Cunningham and Jan Driessen, 2017. Landscape History 39(1): 122-123.
2016 Review of Space-Time Perspectives on Early Colonial Moquegua, by Prudence M. Rice, 2013. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 26(2): 377-378.