Christian Mader, an anthropological and economic archaeologist specializing in the Andean region, is the leader of the Research Group 'The Archaeology of Dependency (ArchDepth): Resources, Power and Status Differentiation.' With a keen interest in comparative perspectives, his research is driven by the question of how to identify forms of asymmetrical dependency in the archaeological record. Integral to this question is the concept of resource dependencies embodied in a wide range of material culture.