Faculty Profiles

Daniela Raillard Arias (MA Northwestern University 2019, BAhons. University of Toronto 2016) is an anthropological archaeologist specializing in landscapes, ecologies and heritages of the Indigenous Americas, with a focus on the pre-colonial Andes. She will receive her Ph.D. in Anthropology from Northwestern University, where she has been affiliated with the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR), Latin American and Caribbean Studies, and Andean Cultures and Histories. As a scholar-educator, her research and teaching interests span across environmental anthropology, Indigenous and community archaeology, and Andean and Amazonian cultural histories. Her current research on the Ecologies of Ancestors centers local and Indigenous knowledges to trace how mortuary architecture are material extensions of ancestral agency and mediate peoples’ relationships with the environment. This work is based on her ongoing field project Proyecto de Investigación Arqueológica Medio Ambiente, Paisaje, y Arquitectura de los Sitios Ancestrales Chachapoya (PIA MAPA SACHA), which she leads in ethical partnership with Chachapoya descendant communities in the Amazonian Andes of northeastern Peru. Drawing on nearly a decade of relationship-building with local collaborators and training through fellowships in spatial archaeology from SAROI and Indigenous research from CNAIR, Daniela blends participatory mapping, aerial drone photogrammetry, dendroecology, ethnoforestry, oral histories and other material analyses. Raillard Arias’s work was previously supported by numerous awards, including the Wenner-Gren Dissertation Fieldwork Grant, and has been well-received by community members in Leymebamba, Chachapoyas who applauded its transparent and sensitive approach.

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