Identification of guinea pig remains in the Pucará de Tilcara (Jujuy, Argentina): Evidence in favour of the presence of the Andean breed in the Quebrada de Humahuaca

In this article, we identified rodent remains found in the Pucará de Tilcara, an archaeological site from the Argentine Northwest that was occupied by humans from 1,100 ad until the Spanish conquest. The zooarchaeological analyses were carried out using anatomical descriptions and geometric morphometric analyses of the dorsal and ventral views of mandibular remains. The results and the archaeological context discussed showed that all the rodent remains could correspond to the Andean breed of domestic guinea pigs. The combination of the methods used here gave us a strong support to the taxonomical assignment. The presence of domestic guinea pigs in archaeological sites of the northwestern Argentina was never proposed. This approach allowed us to increase knowledge about the distribution of caviines in the region, and their relationship to anthropic processes.Fil: Lopez Geronazzo, Lautaro Nahuel. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas; ArgentinaFil: Otero, Clarisa. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas; Argentina. Universidad de Buenos Aires. Facultad de Filosofía y Letras; ArgentinaFil: Alvarez, Alicia. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Instituto de Geología Minera; ArgentinaFil: Ercoli, Marcos Darío. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Salta. Instituto de Ecorregiones Andinas; Argentina. Universidad Nacional de Jujuy. Instituto de Geología Minera; ArgentinaFil: Cortés Delgado, Natalia. University of Illinois; Estados Unido

The Metrological Research of Machu Picchu Settlement: Application of a Cosine Quantogram Method for 3D Laser Data

The purpose of this research is to look for a basic unit or units of measure (quantum), the multiplication of which would help delineate the outline of Inca settlements such as Machu Picchu. By making use of the statistical method developed by D. G. Kendall, the cosine quantogram, and dealing with data acquired through 3D laser scanning, we can answer the question about Inca imperial measurement system. Based on length measurements from the construction level of niches, we can conclude that an imperial system of measure existed. Three basic units of design were used in different ranks and functions of the building, as follows: 0.20 m; 0.41 m; 0.54 m

Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide

Nowhere on Earth is there an ecological transformation so swift and so extreme as between the snow-line of the high Andes and the tropical rainforest of Amazonia. The different disciplines that research the human past in South America have long tended to treat these two great subzones of the continent as self-contained enough to be taken independently of each other. Objections have repeatedly been raised, however, to warn against imagining too sharp a divide between the people and societies of the Andes and Amazonia, when there are also clear indications of significant connections and transitions between them. Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide brings together archaeologists, linguists, geneticists, anthropologists, ethnohistorians and historians to explore both correlations and contrasts in how the various disciplines see the relationship between the Andes and Amazonia, from deepest prehistory up to the European colonial period. The volume emerges from an innovative programme of conferences and symposia conceived explicitly to foster awareness, discussion and co-operation across the divides between disciplines. Underway since 2008, this programme has already yielded major publications on the Andean past, including History and Language in the Andes (2011) andArchaeology and Language in the Andes (2012). ‘This book makes a major contribution to the study of the deep, interregional history of humanity in South America. I am unaware of any other volume that occupies the place envisioned for this work, with the result that it will become a standard book to be read or consulted for some time to come. Overall, it is a professional contribution of real significance that will be widely used across history, genetics, linguistics, and archaeology, as discussion of the kinds of issues treated by this study of Andean-Amazonian relations is badly needed.’ – Terence N. D’Altroy, Columbia Universit

Lost Languages of the Peruvian North Coast

This book is about the original indigenous languages of the Peruvian North Coast, likely associated with the important pre-Columbian societies of the coastal deserts, but poorly documented and now irrevocably lost Sechura and Tallán in Piura, Mochica in Lambayeque and La Libertad, and further south Quingnam, perhaps spoken as far south as the Central Coast. The book presents the original distribution of these languages in early colonial times, discusses available and lost sources, and traces their demise as speakers switched to Spanish at different points of time after conquest. To the extent possible, the book also explores what can be learned about the sound system, grammar, and lexicon of the North Coast languages from the available materials. It explores what can be said on past language contacts and the linguistic areality of the North Coast and Northern Peru as a whole, and asks to what extent linguistic boundaries on the North Coast can be projected into the pre-Columbian past

Unpacking the Okanagan Person-Marking Conundrum

Okanagan, a Southern Interior Salish language spoken in northern Washington state and southern British Columbia, exhibits a peculiar set of pronominal morphemes that surely are a testament to a diverse and varied history. From the outside, the pronominal markers associated with Okanagan clauses appear to be a disparate group of morphemes. A lack of formal similarity frustrates attempts to characterize them as either nominative-accusative or ergative-absolutive. Morphologically the pronominal forms appear to be the typologically rare tripartite system. Yet, speakers have little trouble using the different markers in their appropriate contexts. In what follows, I will propose an analysis of how the person marking in the language has come to have such an interesting shape. I will offer internal and external motivations that the system responded to as it evolved into its current form

Theaters of Power: Inka Imperial Performance

Military and police power has proven time and again to be necessary but not sufficient to create and maintain an empire. Empires must employ a multitude of strategies to expand and survive, one of the most important of which is state-sanctioned public spectacles, ceremonies, and rituals. This dissertation examines the roles of these large-scale non-quotidian performances that are organized and directed by political agents, occur generally at specified times and locations, and include elements of the spectacular, theatricality, cosmological invocation, and feasting. These, state-sanctioned public spectacles, ceremonies, and rituals, have received inadequate attention from archaeologists. Archaeologists traditionally focused on the development of administrative and economic systems, ignoring the roles of performances in imperial expansion, which have often been considered epiphenomenal. My own research has focused on one of these empires, the Inka, and how it grew from a small single valley in Peru to a powerful polity ranging north to Ecuador and Colombia, south to Chile and Argentina, and east to Bolivia and Paraguay. This expansion occurred without many of the tools historically considered critical to such expansion, including a writing system, horses, and the wheel. I analyze religious and state constructions and spaces for their roles in and as the settings for spectacles and ceremonies. Utilizing a performance-based perspective and theories of semiotics and pragmatics drawn from semiotic anthropology, I focus on a particular set of Inka performance spaces and their role in imperial expansion and control: the capital Cuzco and certain replicas of that capital constructed in other parts of the empire. I suggest that these sites served as the settings for a calendar of ritual ceremonies and spectacles that referenced certain repeated physical attributes and were performed by and for an audience of the Inka themselves, and did not, like other performances in the empire, involve the meaningful participation of other social groups within the empire. I also suggest that these Cuzco replicas were strategically placed in areas of war and rebellion where the utilization of ritual performance to maintain, reinforce, inculcate and manipulate Inka ideology, identity, and power was a critical element of imperial strategy

Epistemology as Politics and the Double-Bind of Border Thinking: Levi-Strauss, Deleuze and Guattari, Mignolo

This paper examines Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari’s theories of writing and the State in Anti-Oedipus and A Thousand Plateaus, teasing out issues of gender, primitivism and academic expertise in the authors’ claims about power and politics. While noting the benefits of politically analysing social customs and traditions, Laurie highlights the complicities between Deleuze and Guattari's theories and the assumptions embedded in their anthropological sources. He further argues that the cultural and historical speculations in Anti-Oedipus cannot be divorced from the authors' privilege of philosophy as a uniquely European creative space. Seeking an alternative perspective on cultural translation, the paper turns to Walter Mignolo’s study of the 'book' in Spanish-Amerindian colonial encounters. Foregrounding the critical value of philology for ‘de-colonising’ theory, Mignolo argues that Eurocentric cultural comparisons serve to legitimate particular ways of knowing within contested fields of representation. However, in both Deleuze and Guattari and Mignolo, the paper questions the gender dynamics of writing practices implicitly articulated in meta-narratives about the State and/or colonialism. Laurie suggests that these authors frequently remain oblivious to the role of women in the historical contexts examined, and that understanding political dynamics within cultural groups requires questioning the privilege of writing itself, both in and outside the academy. While sympathetic to the role of political philosophy in negotiating complex historical issues, this paper also advocates a rethinking of the subordinate place attributed to anthropological and historical research practices in the theoretical exegeses of Deleuze, Guattari and Mignolo

Incas and Arawaks: A Special Relationship along the Andes-Amazonian Frontier

In this article the author argues that the Incas and the Arawaks had a relationship that was more complementary than antagonistic