The Andean Material World

The article critically appraises the ontological turn in archaeological research, especially approaches that draw inspiration from nonrepresentational and non-anthropocentric theories. A comparison of the Late Formative center of Jatanca (300-100 BCE) with the neighboring Moche site of Huaca Colorada (AD 650-850) in the Jequetepeque Valley of Peru will then demonstrate how radical transformations in architectural construction point to fundamental changes in how communities perceived and experienced the material world. The markedly different traditions of place making certainly suggest significant shifts in the meaning and political effects of built environments. Nevertheless, the article concludes with the important caveat that the pronounced architectural differences do not necessarily translate to major shifts in ontologies and constructions of personhood but more likely to transformations in ritual practices and political organization. Therefore, the comparison reveals the dangers of assuming that distinct materialities correspond to distinct ontologies or even distinct "materialisms." Ultimately, the author argues that a focus on the materialities of place making, as opposed to generic interpretations of ontology, permits a more effective means of reconstructing historical process within the specific Andean context.

2020

eTopoi. Journal of Ancient Studies (Berlin), 2012

In anthropology, it has become axiomatic that social relationships are constructed through food practices and embodied in food. This paper suggests that both ritual and quotidian commensality have as either a goal or a consequence the construction of specific relations of sociality, and in this regard are not so different. What may distinguish these spheres of commensality, however, are the types of persons engaged in the act of shared consumption. The paper considers ritual commensality as a means of exploring the social universe and indigenous ontology of native Andean peoples, using both archaeological and ethnohistoric data. The role such commensal activities may have played in the construction of, and engagement with, other-than-human persons in the late pre-Columbian Andes is considered.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2023

Drawing from fieldwork and archival research carried out in Bolivia between 2010 and 2017, this article undertakes a rethinking of Indigenous ontologies in light of Bolivian interlocutors' efforts to navigate deeply precarious ties to named places and saints. Attention to such instabilities challenges romantic accounts of ontology that presume a stable domain of materiality or religiosity outside of practice. During fieldwork in central Bolivia, I learned about the ways that Quechua farmers negotiated the relational and ecological e ects of a divisive history of indentured labour and sexual violence through acts of devotion including paraman purina ('walking for rain'), feasting, flute-play, dance, and chapel prayer each February for the Patron Saint La Virgen de la Candelaria, named places, and the Pachamama. These practices sought to rebuild ties to named places that were interrupted by the forbidding of offerings by the prior hacienda master and reshaped by state projects of Indigenous revivalism. These devotional practices, and participants' narrations of them, offer insight into the political workings of Indigenous ontologies in twenty-first-century Bolivia. I propose critical ontologies as a scholarly lens that insists upon placing relations with other-than-humans within broader fields of legal and political contestation over rights, nature, and Indigeneity. Read here: https://rai.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/1467-9655.13962

Journal of the Anthropology Society of Oxford (JASO)-online, 2011

As a significant sub-discipline within anthropology, material culture studies have been at the forefront of ground-breaking theories regarding the relationships between people and things. A whole genre of object biographies have been produced, based on article on the 'social life of things ' (cf. Saunders 1999. Daniel Miller's (1987) interpretation of Hegel's dialectical materialism led to a serious discussion of how people and objects mutually reinforce and create each other. While Kopytoff's theory has been widely criticized for its passive, semiotic approach , Miller's notion of 'materiality' (1987, 2010) moved away from the meanings of objects to focus on how they act within the field of social relations. As more anthropologists and archaeologists engage with material culture studies, however, the assumptions on which this sub-field have been based are being called into question. Rival's edited volume (1998) includes ethnographic accounts attempting to reconcile the symbolic and material aspects of person ̶ thing relationships. Ingold (2007b) adopts a more radical view, bypassing a discussion of symbolism and critiquing 'materiality' for being an abstract category. His phenomenological approach calls for an analysis of the material substance and affects/effects of things. Instead of analysing the 'thinginess' of things, as is the case in materiality studies, Ingold advocates an exploration of how things are 'thingly'; that is, how they emerge in the world of both people and things (Ingold 2007b: 9). In this sense, things are not essential, unchanging entities but are instead contingent (Holtorf 2002) on time, space, and their relationships with other emergent things and people. This brief summary of material culture studies reveals that the basic relationships under analysis, those between people and things, are by their very nature complex and unfold over time. As anthropologists, how are we to make sense of this 'mess' (cf. Hicks 2010: 71) of things and people? In this article, I will argue that a better understanding of people ̶ thing relationships must begin from an expanded Miller, Maize as material culture? 68 notion of 'material culture.' Within material culture analyses, the materials most commonly investigated are manufactured objects. Miller (2010) studies cell phones and saris, Latour (1993b, 2000) researches trains and keys, and many other authors have analysed everything from knapped bottle glass artefacts (Harrison 2003), to potsherds (Holtorf 2002), to rubbish (Shanks 2004). Although Ingold (2000, 2006, 2007a, 2007b) has produced theoretical writings on non-manufactured materials such as trees and the weather, he has yet to write an ethnographic account of such materials in the lives of particular people. While the relationship between people and manufactured objects is undoubtedly important, in certain communities other materials also take on a central role. This article will focus on indigenous Amazonian encounters with things, including artefacts, animals, spirits and plants. Human ̶ plant relationships will be given a particular emphasis, as these engagements are understudied and not usually included in the domain of 'material culture studies' (an important exception is Rival ed. 1998). It will be shown how a more complete theoretical understanding of the relationship between people and all sorts of things can be found in the rich ethnographies of Amazonia.

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 1997

Several years ago, in a general review of the state of the art, Frank Salomon implied that Andean ethnography—as practised by Westerners—had reached a point of unification between two dominant approaches: the 'structuralist insights' of Lévi-Strauss and the Dutch school, as perpetrated by Tom Zuidema, and the ‘historicism’ and ‘ecological perspectives’ of John Murra (Salomon, 1982, p. 93). Although Andean ethnography has continued to fall within these two paradigms in the last decade, there are now signs that a new kind of approach is in the making. I would characterize this new direction as one that finally abandons the closed hermeneutical circle of prior theories (Ricoeur, Geertz), the thesis and peer group, to focus instead on the study of native Andean discourse, native Andean texts and native Andean textual practices. In the Andes, this is a particularly radical departure, as it entails the understanding of weaving, rather than writing, as the primary form of communication. Much of this impulse for change has come from Andeans themselves.

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2009