Practicing Communities and Experimental Bioarchaeology: A Look at the Tiwanaku (AD 500–1100) and Their Descendant Communities in Bolivia

Summary

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 entheseal/muscle attachment changes and osteoarthritis. We used 3D computerized motion capture (mocap) to record women and men performing generalized tasks like farming, grinding, or chuño (freeze-dried potato) production, and specialized crafting of pottery or woven items. Interviews focused on physicality, such as handedness, pain, and hours to create a finished product, and on information about apprenticeship relationships such as who had trained them, whom they trained, and how long it took to learn these skills. We found that the best interviews and data were collected when these experts invited us into their Communities of Practice (CoPs)—a process during which we as anthropologists came to experience membership in an emergent CoP through non-textual knowledge production. While the analyses of skeletal comparisons to these tasks is ongoing, initial findings show patterns on the skeletons of Tiwanaku peoples which correspond to specific aspects of craft production, such as the use of a drop spindle for weaving.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Communities of Practice in the Ancient Andes: Thinking through Knowledge Transmission and Community Making in and beyond Craft Production   •
• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 32708