A Past as a Place

The existence of a situational concept indissolubly spatial and temporal in the Bolivian altiplano, better defined by the aymara term pacha, in the south-central Andes is well sustained by ethno-historic and ethnographic accounts. However, the implications of this concept for archaeological research have not been considered enough. Is especially suggestive that, the past being necessarily a place, humans may have conceived various ways to physically interact with their pasts through ceremonialism. This chapter considers the implication of this idea within a framework of archaeology of time, applying a fractal model of the pacha concept in its various nested scales. In order to illustrate the material forms that the idea of relating with the entities of a “place of the past” can adopt, this chapter discusses three case-studies along a historic sequence. The chapter finishes with some thoughts about the specific material conducts that can be adopted, even within the same ontological framework.

The Head as the Seat of the Soul

There are many visual representations spanning the different time periods of the ancient Andes, and corroborated by historic accounts, that point to man’s spiritual essence as residing in the head, and more specifically, head hair. These examples suggest that this power was transferable and maintained the spiritual reciprocity between men, and the earthly and supernatural realm. This presentation briefly discusses the human head and hair in Andean belief as a conduit for the flow of spiritual power as documented in the archaeological, ethnographic, and historic record. The data suggest that such movement of energy was fundamental to maintaining the equilibrium in life- a balance in social ties and relations, resources, political control, and supernatural interactions, as broadly conveyed in metaphor. In recognizing this concept, scholars may better interpret what is found in the archaeological record tied to this basic Andean principal.

Moche Mereology

Archaeological research can only proceed by arranging parts to form a whole, and conversely to deconstruct wholes through an analysis of their parts, following a philosophy known as mereology. Similar to archaeological inference, the Moche equated human bodies and built spaces as partible actors that combined to form an integrated whole. This worldview was likely based on an ontology that has been described as “synecdochal” by Andeanists. In other words, deep-seated dispositions on the interchangeablility and partibility of various beings point to a mereological logic specific to the Moche. The ritual recreations of the monument thus resulted in an “archaeological record” readily amenable to interpretation. However, we argue that ontology alone fails to explain rituals of architectural renovation and human sacrifice documented at Huaca Colorada (AD 650–850); the application of other etic categories, including ideology, epistemology, and philosophy are required to more fully interpret such complex practices.

Analogism at Chavín de Huántar

Approaches to understanding the core beliefs and worldviews of ancient peoples are not superficially facilitated by the archaeological record. Sometimes, pre-Columbian people are described by analogy to presumably similar contemporary people; that is, a theoretical framework applicable to certain modern peoples is applied a priori in the investigation of a site. This chapter argues that at Chavín de Huántar, interpretations centred around animism and shamanism employ these concepts a priori as ways of understanding the material record. Many of the references to shamanism make specific analogies to Amazonian practices and import these ideas to Chavín de Huántar. Furthermore, the chapter authors argue that, if the iconographic and material record at Chavín de Huánta are carefully evaluated, interpretations centred around animism and shamanism will not follow. The authors demonstrate that the analogist ontology formulated by Descola finds a firmer grounding in the iconographic and material record when these are considered together.

Rock Art, Historical Ontologies, and the Genealogy of Landscape

Prehispanic ontologies can be conceptualized as historically situated meshworks that unfold particular engagements among humans, other-than-humans, places and substances. The affective and animacy capacities of the participant of these fields of relations are connected to their historical position within them. Through comparing the visual, technical, and spatial attributes of rock art production during 3,500 years in Valle El Encanto (Chile), we describe how the manufacture of rock paintings and petroglyphs unfolded different fields of relations. Based on the above, this chapter discusses how these particular meshworks were related to specific historical landscapes and two different ontologies: one related to hunter-gatherer groups and another to Andean-agrarian communities. The transformation identified in Valle El Encanto allows us to discuss the historical replacement of ontologies, as well as how social practices and the affective and animacy capacities of other-than-humans, places and substances changed their relative position within the fields of relation throughout history.

Moche Corporeal Ontologies

The body is an analytical category that has been very little problematized, and even less theorized, in archaeology. This limitation is particularly notorious in Andean archaeology. This chapter resonates with the current discussion of the ontological turn in the discipline and discusses how this paradigm offers new theoretical tools for an alternative understanding of the human body, its boundaries, and the various ways in which it manifests in the natural and social world. By using Viveiros de Castro´s Amerindian Perspectivism, this chapter re-evaluates the archaeological data from the Late Moche (AD 650–850) cemetery of San José de Moro, in northern Peru, and, thus, characterizes a Moche corporeal ontology, under which the body is conceptualized as an ever-changing entity with relational characteristics and transubstantiation properties. This conceptualization echoes the Andean notion of sami or vital essence, which transfigures, transmutes, and exerts significant influences on the social and natural world of Andean people.

Andean Ontologies

Andean ontologies can be used to improve the interpretation and understanding of pre-Hispanic societies and their history. Relevant anthropological, archaeological, historical and linguistic sources are reviewed from which the main Andean ontologies have emerged. Furthermore, in this chapter, Andean terms such as Camay, Pacha, Huaca and Runa are discussed, as well as their origins, their explanatory potential of Andean phenomena and their applications to pre-colonial archaeology. Finally, this chapter reviews the reasons why Andean ontologies should be considered in archaeological explanations.

Ontological Foundations for Inka Archaeology

Understanding distinctively Inka (and southern Quechua) ways of interacting with the world requires integrated social, cultural, linguistic, cognitive, and material evidence. These include properties of the world (“what there is”), causal relationships among them (for example, that places have social agency); and spatial orientation. Each of these follow general principles-- embodied in language, cognition, social relations, and material culture—that are interconnectioned, some mutually compatible, and others incompatible, which warrant certain social and material outcomes and not others. These in turn can be tested archaeologically.

Toward a Situated Ontology of Bodies and Landscapes in the Archaeology of the Southern Andes (First Millennium AD, Northwest Argentina)

In this chapter, a new approach to landscapes by working through alternative ontologies of bodies. Conventional theories of landscape imply a specific kind of conceptualization of the body that cuts off a host of ontological alternatives. Indeed, the very idea of landscape is an artefact or effect of a western concept of bodies as either neutral platforms of observation or sensing things. Amazonian theories of bodies are an entry point to explore the geographic extension of the La Candelaria culture of first millennium northwest Argentina. The focus is shifted from the relation between humans and world to that among multiple beings, including beings that are traditionally called elements of the landscape. The argument is that the way of relating and constituting oneself as human among the multitude of selves is what made life possible for the La Candelaria in the very different environments they inhabited.

Huaca Salango

Pre-Columbian sacred sites are complex phenomena that present a distinct challenge to rationalism. Accordingly, huaca and other Quechua concepts concerning the sacred not only provide alternative keys to the interpretation of Andean sites of Inca date, but may also be usefully applied to earlier sites that lie beyond the Andes proper. From 600 BC to 600 AD, architecture, human burials and artefact offerings all contributed to the making of a ceremonial complex associated with a natural landform and its spirit owner at Salango, on the central coast of Ecuador. Salango thus allows study both of the different means by which an ancient non-Andean huaca was constructed, and of its various functions. It also shows how the structure, substance and symbolism of individual huacas can provide direct evidence for localized ontologies that need to be understood on their own terms.