Cuales cuentos cuentan? Opportunities to question the semioses of historicity in Historical Archaeology through investigation of the Andean past

Summary

The combination of Colonial Spanish preoccupations with establishing written, historical records, and late prehispanic and colonial Andean practices of codifying and communicating the past through means other than writing proper permits interrogation of the very semiotic and epistemological notions involved in constructing and reconstructing the archaeological and historical past. This paper addresses the conference and session themes by investigating different forms, content, meanings, and effects of accounts of the past in late prehispanic through early Colonial Huarochirí, Peru. I argue that such historiographic, temporal questions matter because they produce new objective archaeological data and more accurate cultural understanding of Andean culture and the past. Not coincidentally, these matters were also of great import to the historical actors and processes of the period in question. Bringing new archaeological research into synthesis with Huarochirí’s unique Quechua manuscript, I suggest which of these accounts counted, as well as how and why.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Las preguntas que cuentan: Ideas and interpretations in Latin American Historical Archaeology   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2014

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Society for Historical Archaeology

Record Identifiers

PaperId(s): SYM-33,11