An Inka Offering at Yayno (North Highlands, Peru): Objects, Subjects and Gifts in the Ancient Andes

While Marcel Mauss's landmark essay on The Gift has been vital in social anthropology, inspiring a vast and influential secondary literature, the gift has been much less prominent in archaeological interpretation. This study considers evidence for an ancient Andean gift economy, a system of reciprocal exchanges focused on making people and ensuring group social relations, rather than accumulating wealth/capital. Excavations at Yayno (north highlands, Ancash, Peru) revealed two features dating to the time of the Inkas: 1) a slab-lined cist burial; and 2) an offering deposit containing abundant long-distance trade and sumptuary items. Besides its mountaintop location, the burial's intrusive character and foreign items indicate that the offerings were made to propitiate the place, ruins and their divine aspect. This essay studies the reciprocal acts that led to the offerings, comparing them to gifting patterns in Inka human sacrifices known as capac hucha. The key actors in the exchange were children, divinities, Inka bureaucrats, local leaders and state subjects

Isla Natividad: A Small Coastal Community Faces An Uncertain Future

Isla Natividad is a small fishing community off the Pacific coast of Baja California Sur, México. A lease from the Mexican government allows them exclusive rights over the waters surrounding their island. They are part of a successful fishing cooperative, la Sociedad Cooperativa de Producción Pesquera Buzos y Pescadores that sells their seafood on the international market. Isla Natividad is an island of fishermen. Like many small fishing communities worldwide, Isla Natividad is concerned with climate change, diminishing fish populations, and the increased effort required to get their product to market. They also worry about their children's futures on an island with few work opportunities. Isla Natividad is part of a federally protected area, la Reserva de la Biosfera el Vizcaino, so the town's footprint cannot expand, and the number of residents is limited to around 400. As members retire, they must leave the island and return to the mainland. If the children of current members are not interested in working in the fishing industry, they must pursue employment elsewhere.A small group was formed to bring ecotourism to the island. Through interviews with community members, this film explores the island's desire to open up to new avenues of employment while giving voice to its fears of losing its identity. Isla Natividad allows the residents of the island to tell their own story.Please see the film attached to this project here: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1QylfFaZoZ1KnO1FTGwItCwnyiA-LZTx5/view&nbsp

Recognising strategies for conquered territories: a case study from the Inka North Calchaquí Valley

One major concern regarding the study of ancient empires is how they ruled and controlled their subjects and justified their domination (see Alcock et al. 2001). This article explores ancient empires’ strategies of colonization and legitimacy, the Inka Empire’s in this case, taking into account that the Inka Empire or Tawantinsuyu was the outcome of a particular historical and socio-cultural trajectory and geographical context and, therefore, the nature of its power strategies and methods of domination differed from other ancient or modern forms of imperialism. We believe that the particularities of each case are sometimes more interesting than their similarities since they allow us to appreciate the diverse ways in which societies order and understand the world. This paper offers a case study that will contribute to deepen our understanding of the variability of ancient imperialism and that students of past empires can use to compare and contrast with their own cases. Here we examine Inka rule over the North Calchaquí Valley (Figure 1), showing that the strategic use of architecture and the manipulation of people’s corporal experience within Inka places were key aspects of Tawantinsuyu’s domination in the region.Fil: Ferrari, Alejandro Andrés. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas; ArgentinaFil: Troncoso Melendez, Andres Rolando. Universidad de Chile; ChileFil: Acuto, Felix Alejandro. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Saavedra 15. Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas; Argentin