People-as-Animal Comparisons and the Indigenous Experience of Spanish Colonialism in the Andes.

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Animal metaphors can express conceptualizations of humanity and attitudes about society when referring to groups of people. In Spanish colonial contexts in the Americas, these metaphors often reinforced social hierarchies and denigrated indigenous peoples. Although few, there are first-hand accounts of indigenous authors subverting these discourses to their advantage. By examining their use of animal metaphors, we can center indigenous agency in our historical interpretations of the complex processes of colonization. In this project, I explore how the Andean indigenous author, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, used animal metaphors in his 1615-1616 manuscript through conceptual metaphor theory and social semiotics. Guaman Poma weaved his colonial context into people-as-animal comparisons displaying aspects of human-animal and Spaniard-indigenous interactions during the first century of Spanish colonization. I also present how similar uses of these comparisons by present-day indigenous people reveal aspects of the colonial legacy and how investigating the historical origin of these metaphors can improve our understanding of the socio-political positions of indigenous peoples today. This project shows the potential for combining ethnohistorical and ethnographic research with zooarchaeological evidence to reconstruct the indigenous and animal experience of colonialization and its legacy.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38047.0