The Infrastructure of Inequality: Modeling Movement in the 18th C. Andes

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

El Lazarillo de Ciegos Caminantes (1775) describes the colonial highway from Buenos Aires to Lima. Authored by a Spanish official, the document reflects a uniquely elite experience of travel. The author describes a route centered on a system of official lodging infrastructure. However, the archaeological record shows significant numbers of traditional Andean pastoral campsites dating to the colonial period. This suggests that the formal lodgings described in historic sources catered to a select few, and that for many, roadside lodging likely consisted of informal, ephemeral sites. This paper presents a GIS reconstruction of the route, and argues that combining humanistic GIS with historical and archaeological lines of evidence provides a new perspective on the lived experience of movement in the past. Primarily, this experience was structured by class. The colonial elite’s view of how travelers should move along roads contrasts strongly with how laborers most likely experienced them.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Paper / Report Submission (General Sessions)   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow