Associate Professor of Anthropology
hudx@jmu.edu
Contact Info
Website: http://dihudi.github.io/
Education
Ph.D. University of California, Berkeley
M.A. University of California, Berkeley
B.A. University of Pennsylvania
Teaching
Anth 197: Introduction to Archaeology
Anth 205: Buried Cities, Lost Tribes
Anth 302: Archaeology of Empires and Rebels
Anth 303: Archaeology of the Andes
Anth 395: Experimental Archaeology
Anth 395: Food Archaeology
Research
I use the lenses of political geography and landscape to develop a long-term understanding of political strategies of consolidation and control, bottom-up social movements, and identity transformation. I have particular area expertise in the Andes, with research on multi-community polity and state formation in the southern Titicaca Basin in Bolivia (Chiripa and Tiwanaku) and rebellious social landscapes in Peru (Inca and Spanish colonial). My methodological expertise includes geochemical and lithic analysis, GIS, and spatial analysis (space syntax and network analysis). I investigate how landscape constrains and provides opportunities for collective action, such as the rise of states, coordinated rebellions, and the emergence of new group identities in South America. My research highlights the key role that social landscapes—the organization of social relations over the landscape—play in facilitating collective struggles to control one’s own labor, ritual landscape, and ecological resources.
Select Publications
Hu, Di, Víctor Vásquez Sánchez, Teresa Rosales Tham, Katherine L. Chiou, and Rob Cuthrell. 2024. “Food and labor under imperial rule: Unraveling the food landscape of transplanted workers (mitmaqkuna) in the Inka Empire” Cambridge Archaeological Journal 35:1: 207-226.
Hu, Di. 2022. The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru. Historical Archaeology in South America series, University of Alabama Press.
Hu, Di and Kylie Quave. 2021. Indigenous Persistence in the Face of Imperialism: Andean Case Studies. In The Routledge Handbook of the Archaeology of Indigenous-Colonial Interaction in the Americas, edited by Lee Panich and Sara Gonzalez.
Hu, Di and Kylie Quave. 2020. Prosperity and prestige: Archaeological realities of unfree laborers under Inka imperialism. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 59: 101201.
Hu, Di. 2019. Making space under the Inca: Space syntax analysis of a mitmaq settlement in Vilcashuamán province, Peru. Antiquity 93: 990-1008.
Hu, Di and M. Steven Shackley. 2018. ED-XRF analysis of obsidian artifacts from Yanawilka, a settlement of transplanted laborers (mitmaqkuna), and implications for Inca imperialism. Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports 18: 213-221.
Hu, Di. 2017. The Revolutionary Power of Andean Folk Tales. Sapiens. May 16, 2017.
Hu, Di. 2017. John Wymer Bursary Report: War or peace? Assessing the rise of the Tiwanaku state through projectile-point analysis. Lithics 37: 84-86.
Hu, Di. 2013. Approaches to the Archaeology of Ethnogenesis: Past and Emergent Perspectives. Journal of Archaeological Research 21: 371-402.
Hu, Di. 2012. Los documentos en el Archivo San Francisco de Lima sobre el obraje de Pomacocha de las monjas de Santa Clara de Huamanga. Boletín del Archivo San Francisco de Lima 37: 3-4.
Hu, Di. 2011. Advancing Theory?: Landscape Archaeology and Geographic Information Systems. Papers of the Institute of Archaeology 21: 80-90.
Hu, Di. 2011. Memories of Haunted Places: An Andean Village after the Violence. Then Dig.
