Reconstructing Andean pasts: archaeology, biology, or ethnohistory? All of the above, please.

Summary

Over the last several decades Andean archaeology of the late prehispanic through early Spanish colonial periods has grown to the point that critical reassessments of ethnohistorical materials and the anthropological models constructed from them are not only possible but necessary.

Taking as a premise that language and material culture are primary transmissions of cultural life through time, this presentation summarizes recent archaeological research in Cuzco, Huamachuco, Pachacamac, and highlands Huarochirí–all centers of mytho-historical materials central to scholarly reconstructions of the Andean past. I explore the implications of the results of this recent archaeology for our interpretations of early Colonial ethnohistory. In cases of apparent or obvious contradiction, use of archaeological data to reevaluate rather than reject information from colonial documents leads to greater understanding of late prehispanic Andean culture and life.

The realities of Quechua words/concepts like pacha, huaca, llacta, callpa are amenable to archaeological analysis; examination of their concrete historical instantiations can nuance definitions of these concepts even as our understanding of the concepts can produce new archaeological data. The idea is to envision approaches that retain the analytical–even objective–vantage point provided by archaeology while also always working towards reconstructing perceptive and effective realities in the Andean past.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Andean Ontologies: New Perspectives from Archaeology, Ethnohistory and Bioarchaeology

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