Making Kin out of Stone: Production of Landscape and Collectivity in Ancient Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This presentation details different strands of evidence we have on the organisation and kin-based significances of carved stone monoliths during the late prehispanic period of ancient northern Peru (ca. AD 500-1532). Ethnohistorical documents suggest that it was close kin who carved and erected stone images of esteemed forebears; the images themselves, meanwhile, were referred to as ‘brothers’ of the prototype. Stony things—crags, boulders, mountains—were also described as tangible remnants of where past kin ‘lithified’. Archaeology, meanwhile, shows the close associations between the carved monoliths and funerary cult; they were images of the deceased generally adorning mausolea and necropoli. They are consistent with the idea that production of stone images were the purview of family/lineage groups and centred on important instantiations of esteemed forebears in the landscape. It is argued that late prehispanic groups of Peru’s north highlands sought to consolidate collectivity and multiply ancestral presences through their stonework, both within the village setting and through the visible landscape. Engagements with stone during this time of great social and demographic upheaval, was intimately related to the process of 'make kin'.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)   •
• Crafting Culture: Thingselves, Contexts, Meanings

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23030