The absence of evidence: erasure of pre-Hispanic ‘place’ in early colonial north coastal Peru

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Emplacement and Relational Approaches to the Ancient Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The definition of “place” in early colonial north coastal Peru, was based, in part, on Iberian concepts of what constituted ‘good’ land. Ethnohistoric analysis of archival evidence from the period reveals a friction between two distinct worldviews around land, water, ownership, labor, and likely, place. To arrive at a better understanding of both indigenous pre-Hispanic and Spanish colonial concepts of place, this paper argues that it may be productive to ask, what kinds of pre-Hispanic places were erased in the course of the establishment of the colonial state? By examining landscapes with evidence of pre-Hispanic agricultural development and comparing these with early Spanish documentation, maps, and water censuses, it is possible to begin to tease out the fundamental differences underlying each society’s relationship to the north coastal environment.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Emplacement and Relational Approaches to the Ancient Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52243