Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production
Part of: Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)
This collection contains the abstracts of the papers presented in the session entitled "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.
The term “Communities of Practice” (CoPs) has been applied to craft production to describe the sharing, learning, and materialization of specialized knowledge in a localized and intimate context. Beyond craft production, CoPs can also offer a new approach to thinking about knowledge transmission between individuals and groups; for example, in ritual practice, subsistence technologies, mnemonics, etc. This symposium challenges its participants to explore this framework to identify and evaluate CoPs in the ancient Andes. What social, political, economic, ecological, or ideological circumstances allowed for the creation and maintenance of CoPs? What evidence or material markers can we use to understand CoPs in the Andean world? How did CoPs share knowledge across distant places and generations? Papers presented here span all periods and regions of the Andes and encompass topics such as craft production, gendered practices, ritual, architecture, bioarchaeology, food production and cuisine, and iconography.
Other Keywords
Communities of Practice •
Archaeometry & Materials Analysis •
Andes: Middle Horizon •
Andes: Late Horizon •
Mortuary Analysis •
Inca •
Andes: Late Intermediate •
Bioarchaeology/Skeletal Analysis •
Ethnography/Ethnoarchaeology •
Andes: Other
Geographic Keywords
Republic of Peru (Country) •
Republic of Panama (Country) •
Republic of Colombia (Country) •
Netherlands Antilles (Country) •
Aruba (Country) •
Republic of Ecuador (Country) •
Republic of Chile (Country) •
South America (Continent) •
South America: Andes
Resources Inside This Collection (Viewing 1-6 of 6)
- Documents (6)
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Communities of Practice and Ancient Andean Houses (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Comparative ethnographic and ethnoarchaeological case studies of house construction demonstrate the significance of communities of practice in the construction and maintenance of houses in the Andes. Key phases of house construction and maintenance...
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Communities of Practice of Metal Craftspeople on the North Coast of Peru, First Millennium CE (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper utilizes a Communities of Practice perspective to explore knowledge transmission of gilding technologies between craftspeople of the Moche and Vicus cultures during the first millennium CE on the north coast of Peru. Craftspeople played...
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Crafting Continuity, Crafting Change: A Compositional Approach to Communities of Practice in the Moquegua Valley, Peru (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. In many regions of the south central Andes, the transition from the Middle Horizon to the Late Intermediate period was accompanied by significant disruption to regional sociopolitical and economic systems, including the organization of craft...
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(Cross-)Boundary Objects as Imperial Agents: Imagined Communities in the Late Precolumbian Andes (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. This paper builds out from the community of practice literature, inflecting it with more emphasis on the agency of objects as active members of such constituencies, and expanding, as well, on Anderson’s notion of imagined communities. In it, I aim to...
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How to Make a Proper Bundle: Ritual Knowledge Transfer and Mortuary Communities of Practice in the Tiwanaku Diaspora (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. The concept Community of Practice (CoP) has found surprisingly limited application in archaeology beyond craft production, yet it also lends itself to examining the situated learning of ritual practices. Rituals require strict adherence to actions and...
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Practicing Communities and Experimental Bioarchaeology: A Look at the Tiwanaku (AD 500–1100) and Their Descendant Communities in Bolivia (2021)
DOCUMENT Citation Only
This is an abstract from the "Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology. Using ethnographic interviews and experimental (bio)archaeology, over 20 individuals participated in this research to look for movement similarities between their modern labor and tasks their Tiwanaku ancestors likely performed, as shown by skeletal...