An Archaeological and Historical Inquiry of Andagua, Peru, 1000-1800AD

Summary

This paper outlines developing dissertation research that integrates archaeological and historical evidence about the community of Andagua and the Ayo Valley in the Southern Peruvian Andes. Constructed as a Spanish colonial reducción, Andagua resides in a seldom-visited highland area, and today is merely considered a rural, provincial neighbor of Arequipa. Andagua, however, has a striking past evident in the substantial prehispanic remains that surround and lie buried beneath the contemporary town. Andagua and the surrounding valley have not received any systematic attention from archaeologists, while an intriguing court case from the mid-18th century recounts how Spanish officials burned ancestral mummies and attempted to eradicate Andean religious beliefs and practices around Andagua. This paper provides preliminary research of the cultural history of the area along with further exploring the "tensions of empire," and asks, how and why did ancestor veneration and mummy worship continue into the mid-18th century among the colonial Andean community of Andagua, and yet at the same time the Andean community identified as subjects of the king of Spain?

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This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage