Consuming Contagion: Taki Onqoy and the Ideological Rejection of European Foodstuffs (16th-Century, Ayacucho, Peru)

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Environmental Intimacies: Political Ecologies of Colonization and Anti-Colonial Resilience", at the 2023 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

Andean groups in the Central Highlands of Peru directly experienced colonialism through evangelization and the periodic presence of Spanish authorities rather than violent combat or direct mandates. Through the entanglement of new European foods and animals (wheat, horse, pig, and cow) with traditional Andean foodstuffs (maize, camelids, and guinea pig), decisions regarding consumption were made based on access to goods and personal preference. For Indigenous communities in the highlands, food consumption choices were ideologically motivated by the 1560s Taki Onqoy (Quechua: “singing/dancing sickness”) movement. Weary of the spread of illnesses and death, Taki Onqoy practitioners strategically rejected European foods to avoid bodily sickness. This presentation explores the ideological adoptions and rejections of specific European and Andean foods through faunal remains at the Taki Onqoy center of Iglesiachayoq (Ayacucho, Peru), to argue that Indigenous peoples refused European traditions as a means of protecting their kin and revitalizing Andean practices.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Environmental Intimacies: Political Ecologies of Colonization and Anti-Colonial Resilience   •
• Society for Historical Archaeology 2023

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow