Gestures in native South America: Ancash Quechua.pdf (original) (raw)
Related papers
Embodied space and time in the Huamantla Map
Indiana, 2020
The Huamantla Map is a cartographic and historical manuscript, painted by speakers of the Otomi language in the eastern Tlaxcala province on a large rectangle of fig-bark paper during the final third of the 16 th century. Originally measuring approximately 7.0 by 1.9 meters, it represents a strip of land extending from the mountains northwest of the Valley of Mexico to the southeastern slope of La Malinche volcano. Within this geographic setting, designed in the native central Mexican tradition, the collective past of the Otomi of Huamantla is depicted, superimposing a narrative structure on the landscape. The story begins with the emergence of sacred ancestors from a primordial cave in cosmological time and ends with the adaptation of the native lords of Huamantla to Spanish colonial rule. The exceptionally large format of this environmentally embedded and socially situated cognitive tool suggests certain types of bodily interaction with its surface, at the time of its execution and during public performances of the story it contains. On a smaller scale, the meaningful placement of pictorial representations of human bodies within this pictorial space provides a path to reflection on the way the Otomi perceived their relationship with the geographic, cultural, and political landscape surrounding them. Resumen: El Mapa de Huamantla es un manuscrito cartográfico e histórico, pintado por otomíes del oriente de la provincia de Tlaxcala sobre un gran rectángulo de papel de amate durante el último tercio del siglo XVI. En su estado original, medía alrededor de 7.0 por 1.9 metros; representa una franja de tierra que se extiende desde las montañas al noroeste del valle de México hasta la falda oriental del volcán La Malinche. Dentro de este entorno geográfico, diseñado dentro de la tradición pictórica indígena del centro de México, se representa el pasado colectivo de los otomíes de Huamantla, sobreponiendo una estructura narrativa al paisaje. La historia inicia con el surgimiento de los antepasados sagrados en el tiempo cosmogónico y termina con la adaptación de los señores indios de Huamantla al dominio colonial español. El formato de esta herramienta cognitiva, socialmente situada, es excepcionalmente grande; esto sugiere ciertos tipos de interacción corporal con su superficie, tanto en el momento de su ejecución como en las actuaciones públicas de la historia que encierra. En una escala menor, la colocación significativa de las representaciones de cuerpos humanos dentro del espacio cartográfico permite la reflexión acerca de cómo los otomíes percibían su relación con el paisaje geográfico, cultural y político que les rodeaba.
30th EAA Annual Meeting, 2024
The highlands of the central-southern Peruvian Andes stand out for their exceptionally transformed landscapes. While the abundant terrace systems have been well studied, little is known about the pastoral landscape of the high-altitude Puna. In the Valley of Sondondo, the Puna supported wetlands, which were used by communities to harvest water for camelid grazing and irrigate fields in lower altitude zones of the valley. Archaeological traces of these activities are evidenced by complex livestock corrals. The corrals also served as important meeting points for communities, such as the sacred practice of chaccu, highlighting the complex relationships between productivity and rituality in the past. In this talk, we will present the preliminary findings of several recently excavated livestock corrals in the Valley of Sondondo. More specifically, we will discuss how microfossil analysis helped us identify the practices undertaken at the corrals, their possible functions, and their place within the agricultural system. We will also discuss some methodological challenges of studying upper montane areas. Ultimately, our study of pastoral corrals will allow us to document the processes of interaction and vertical relationship of the Puna, which served as a supplier not only of meat and fibers but also of crops and fertilizers during the pre-Hispanic history of the valley.
(Re)constructing the sacred: landscape geoarchaeology at Chavín de Huántar, Peru
Archaeological and Anthropological Sciences, 2014
Chavín de Huántar is a first millennium B.C.E. Central Andean ceremonial center set in a steep mountainous landscape that is at once dynamic and, traditional Andean belief systems would suggest, sacred and animate. Landscape geoarchaeology at the site serves to examine both of these factors, characterizing the site’s dynamic environment while also examining the ways in which Chavín’s inhabitants interacted with their fraught surroundings. Using mapping of geomorphic hazards, the character and chronology of the site’s construction and expansion, and ethnohistoric information on the relationships of indigenous Andean peoples to their environments, I discuss ways of examining this interaction. Landscape geoarchaeology at Chavín reveals the site’s expressed relation-ship with the sacred, which was a key aspect of the emergence and reification of sociopolitical inequality at the site.