Memories of New Pasts in Cuzco and Huarochirí

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2021: General Sessions" session, at the 86th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

For decades, historical and anthropological understanding of the late prehispanic Andes was based in large measure on the written texts produced during the periods of Spanish invasion and colonization. However, while scholarly work based on these documents has long emphasized that control and manipulation of social memory was central to the expansion of the Inka Empire, both as a medium for and as a product of the interaction between the Inka and regional and local polities, this same inherent “revisionism” complicates our ability to reconstruct particular processes of the production and reproduction of social memory. In this presentation, data from the authors’ recent archaeological research in Cuzco and Huarochirí shed light on the specific processes of spatial, material, and narrative construction of collective pasts in the late prehispanic Central Andes. These archaeological data penetrate the barrier of prehistory, providing critical insight into the ways social memory was understood, codified, communicated, and made politically instrumental in the socio-political interactions at regional and imperial levels. Bringing these data to bear on readings of the traditions recorded in the written sources provides a vantage point from which we make more broadly applicable suggestions about the nature of collective memory.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting, Online (2021)   •
• SAA 2021: General Sessions

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 33339