The Materiality of Movement and Rhythm in Sajama, Bolivia

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Movement and the rhythm of life, from procuring food to trade and ritual, are major structuring forces of human lives. However, examining these practices archaeologically can prove difficult due to the minimal and/or short lived evidence of routes. The Sajama landscape of the Carangas provides an example of these difficulties, but also how it may inform topics of identity, memory, space, and power. In the past, movement through llama caravans and ritual processions patterned the landscape through pukaras, villages, rest areas, and other features. This movement in Sajama is examined through settlement patterns, construction of outlying features, place memory, the continued use of routes, and the importation of goods. In movement, the Carangas negotiated colonial encounters with the Inka and Spanish empires through the reuse of place and the creation of new spaces that impacted Inka and Spanish colonial projects in the region. Today movement still impacts practice through identity and tourism.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Manifesting Movement Materially: Broadening the Mesoamerican View   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24643