Charki and Red Currant Jam: Provisioning Extractive Industries in Republican Highland Peru

Summary

With the current boom in the archaeology of the colonial period in the central Andes, we risk losing sight of the potential for archaeological investigation of the colonial aftermath. Following important work further afield in the Southern Cone, I argue for the particular relevance archaeology could have in exploring trade liberalization, emancipation, and the new commodity booms of the 19th century. Drawing on the recent investigation of a series of Republican tambos (roadside inns) in the highlands of Palca (Tacna, modern-day Peru), the case study examines patterns of mobility and consumption as these sites were transformed by new extractive industries (primarily silver, copper, and sulfur) in the region. Tying together the growing British entrepreneurial presence and the resilience of 'traditional' forms of mobility and provisioning, these sites point towards a wider story of an emergent regional mining economy that both superseded previous circulations tied to the great silver mines of the altiplano and left a landscape of boom-and-bust development with uneasy resonances with the present.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Markets and Capitalisms in Indigenous Societies in the Colonial Americas   •
• Society for American Archaeology 82nd Annual Meeting, Vancouver, BC (2017)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 14919