Kellogg Institute PhD Fellow Agustina Vazquez Fiorani has been awarded a Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant to continue her doctoral work next year in Argentina. There she will continue her dissertation research project, titled "Assembling the early Andean village: people, ancestors, and meals at the onset of agropastoral lifestyles (Argentina, ca. 200 BCE-AD 800)."
This project investigates how early Andean farmers and herders fed themselves and their families by establishing care relations with each other and their ancestors. Vazquez Fiorani asks how preparing and sharing foods allowed people living in villages and hamlets in the Tafí Valley during the Formative Period (Argentina, ca. 200 BCE-AD 900) to craft social relations of care and culinary reciprocity amongst themselves and their ancestors.
The Wenner-Gren Foundation Dissertation Fieldwork Grant program funds doctoral or thesis research that advances anthropological knowledge. The goal of the grants is to support vibrant and significant work that furthers the understanding of what it means to be human.
Vazquez Fiorani earned a BA in history from the University of Cordoba in Argentina. She received an Erasmus Mundus + scholarship to pursue an MS in archaeological materials sciences through three European universities: University of Évora, University of Thessaloniki, and University of Rome La Sapienza. Since 2015, she has participated in archaeological and community projects in the Southern Andes (northwestern Argentina) and urban archaeology interventions.