The Social Agency of Things? Animism and Materiality in the Andes

A major focus of inter-disciplinary debate has been the need to bridge the Cartesian divide between people as active subjects and inert passive objects, to better reflect how things provoke and resist human actions through their 'secondary agency'. Many Central Andean people express a deep concern about their relationship with places and things, which they communicate with through daily work and rituals involving 'sympathetic magic'. A consideration of Andean animism emphasizes how agency is located in the social relationship people have with the material world and how material objects can have social identities

Globalization without markets? Population movement and other integrative mechanisms in the ancient Andes

In late pre-Hispanic periods much of modern Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina and Ecuador was connected by a network of intense interactions through the long distance movement of people as well as goods and ideas. Rather than prioritising an analysis of the movement of goods as a measure of globalisation this article stresses the more limited role of market exchange in the Andes but that the movement of people, knowledge and skills is strongly expressed in the transfer of technologies and sharing of stylistic elements. It presents a broad description of cross-cultural and interregional contacts that were taking places in the Andean highlands and Pacific coast from around 500 CE till the period of European colonization around 1600 CE, including the Wari and Inka Empires. It reviews mechanisms of social and economic integration that shaped the globalizing tendencies in the Andes through a review of archaeological evidence as well as early historical records

The building and rebuilding of walls: Aspirations, commitments and tensions within an Andean community and the archaeological monument they inhabit

Walls are at the foundation of 'civil society': physical and symbolic barriers that differentiate people and activities. Cooperation in construction work expresses people's aspirations and can be a focus for the development of group solidarity. However, walls change the control and use of space, causing tensions and social divisions. In Raqchi, a small Peruvian village whose houses and fields are located within the ruins of a major archaeological complex, walls are a major concern. The work involved in house building, community projects, a monumental Inka temple and recent heritage reconstruction shows how the choice of materials and techniques is influenced by social relations and labour exchange. Tensions are expressed over land ownership and community priorities as well as with heritage management. The community's identity and status are also strongly influenced by building work that is dependent on the Catholic Church, NGOs, the municipality and the nation state.Walls can be read as a document of this contested history. © The Author(s) 2013

Miniatures and Animism: The communicative role of Inka carved stone conopa

Andean offerings use miniaturisation and synecdoche to enact connections within a relational animism (where people, places and things participate in an interactive network), allowing the person preparing the offering to make material links between them and more distant, non-human entities. Catholic priests working in the Andes during the Spanish colonial period tried to eradicate these practices within which small objects called conopa were used. Conopa included natural stones and carved stone figurines which were understood to be active agents that helped those who were preparing offering to communicate with animate locals in the landscape. An analysis of Inka and colonial period carved stone conopa in the form of camelids reveals that some of these were produced in an organized system of manufacture under the auspices of the Inka state. This contributes to a discussion of how Andean household rituals have adapted in response to distinct social, economic and political contexts

La Saisonnalité des Techniques

This paper discusses seasonal changes in technical activities as an example of how technologies are socially embedded. It argues that while some technological choices are partly a response to seasonal shifts in environmental conditions, seasonality also provides a rhythm to social life that has economic, political and ideological motivations and consequences. The seasonal availability of resources and the presence or absence of specific environmental conditions has repercussions that affect a wide range of technical activities, and this paper considers the relationship between agricultural production and craft activities in the Andean Highlands. Seasonal changes in the organisation of labour within Andean agricultural are also influential in the organisation of craft production, and communities with distinct craft specialisations play a major role in the maintenance of social relations and cultural understandings

Evaluating effects of chemical weathering and surface contamination on the in situ provenance analysis of building stones in the Cuzco region of Peru with portable XRF

As the only type of instrument capable of determining artifact geochemistry in a wide variety of settings, portable X-Ray Fluorescence (PXRF) may be frequently utilized as probably the best option for collecting data when removal of objects in part or in whole is unfeasible. However, using PXRF in circumstances where sample selection and preparation diverge from standards developed for lab-based instrumentation requires assessing the impact of new and potentially limiting factors to establish the validity of the method in these new contexts. Here we examine the effects of surface contamination and chemical weathering on the ability to assess provenance of igneous building stones used in the Cuzco region of Peru. Surface contamination was assessed through comparing low-impact cleaning methods on diorite and andesite blocks, and weathering was examined by comparing weathered vs. fresh surfaces of samples from two andesite quarries. In general, the lightest elements were most impacted by contamination and weathering while measurements of many of the heavier elements commonly used in provenance studies were relatively unaffected. Concentrations of Pb and Zn were problematic in the urban context of Cuzco because of pollution. Ability to determine provenance of building stones within those limitations (i.e., the validity of this application of PXRF) was demonstrated in a preliminary study by comparing measurements from uncleaned, exposed building stones in the region to fresh quarry samples

Rethinking cultural hybridity and technology transfer: SEM microstructural analysis of lead glazed ceramics from early colonial Peru

Through Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM) microstructural analysis, we examine the firing technology of Early Green Glazed (EGG) Ware – a variety of “hybrid” lead-glazed ceramics produced in Peru's north coast region during the 16th century CE. Previous scholars have interpreted EGG Ware as the product of indigenous potters who fired ceramics in kilns and learned how to make glazed vessels through direct instruction from Iberian ceramicists. We argue that the production of EGG Ware entailed a more complex process of technological incorporation and innovation. SEM microstructural analysis of 44 archaeological samples suggests that these ceramics were originally fired under highly variable conditions. Parallel analysis of five samples of lead-glazed ceramics produced in open firings by Peruvian artisans in the 1980's reveals consistent firing beyond their clays' maturation temperatures. Based on these results and analysis of whole EGG Ware vessels from museum collections, we suggest that at least some of our EGG Ware samples were produced in open firings. In turn, we argue that EGG Ware reflects the creativity of native potters who adapted indigenous firing technologies and experimented with different parameters in the process of forging a new decorative tradition

Accurate ab initio spin densities

We present an approach for the calculation of spin density distributions for molecules that require very large active spaces for a qualitatively correct description of their electronic structure. Our approach is based on the density-matrix renormalization group (DMRG) algorithm to calculate the spin density matrix elements as basic quantity for the spatially resolved spin density distribution. The spin density matrix elements are directly determined from the second-quantized elementary operators optimized by the DMRG algorithm. As an analytic convergence criterion for the spin density distribution, we employ our recently developed sampling-reconstruction scheme [J. Chem. Phys. 2011, 134, 224101] to build an accurate complete-active-space configuration-interaction (CASCI) wave function from the optimized matrix product states. The spin density matrix elements can then also be determined as an expectation value employing the reconstructed wave function expansion. Furthermore, the explicit reconstruction of a CASCI-type wave function provides insights into chemically interesting features of the molecule under study such as the distribution of $\alpha$- and $\beta$-electrons in terms of Slater determinants, CI coefficients, and natural orbitals. The methodology is applied to an iron nitrosyl complex which we have identified as a challenging system for standard approaches [J. Chem. Theory Comput. 2011, 7, 2740].Comment: 37 pages, 13 figure