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2588 results in Archaeology of The Americas

Page 15 of 130

  • Seven - Conclusions

  • Elizabeth N. Arkush, University of Pittsburgh
  • Book:
    War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes
    Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022, pp 220-227

  • Summary

    Rich ethnographic treatments and historical descriptions make it clear what a varied and complicated thing warfare was in the premodern era. But despite some important contributions, we have not gone very far to map out that space of possibility – its axes, clusters, and gaps. Traditionally, archaeological research on war has focused on severity – that is, “was there war or not?” – and its possible drivers more than other realms of variation. At times, archaeologists have absorbed the erroneous impression that war was mainly about demographic pressure and land seizure. One pernicious result is an imaginary dichotomy of religiously motivated, ritualized fighting over intangibles, and secular, severe warfare over land. This dichotomy does not correspond to reality, but it continues to surface and influence scholarly discourse.

  • Three - Toward a Better Model of War

  • Elizabeth N. Arkush, University of Pittsburgh
  • Book:
    War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes
    Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022, pp 70-94

  • Summary

    Breaking out of the stale vision of Andean war as either “real” (secular, territorial, severe conflict against external enemies) or “ritual” (religiously motivated, choreographed, low-casualty combat between social segments) means coming up with ways of recognizing and exploring the true complexity of Andean wars, and the full humanity of their participants. This chapter offers one way. It is grounded in a comparative tradition of archaeological scholarship, one that assumes there are meaningful cross-cultural patterns, and draws heavily on cross-cultural ethnography and ethnohistory to inform the archaeological imagination. My premise is that some situations of war, though distant in time and space, bear a sort of family resemblance. This is not to negate specifically Andean meanings and practices in war. Nor is it to deny the finer-grained story – the specific military norms and expectations of a cultural milieu, the varied motives of fighters and leaders, and the local histories of hostility. That is, I am not trying to explain something as complex and tangled as a single war. This chapter aims for the low-hanging fruit, the patterns at the large scale.

  • One - Introduction

  • Elizabeth N. Arkush, University of Pittsburgh
  • Book:
    War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes
    Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022, pp 1-18

  • Summary

    When the Spanish conquistador Francisco Pizarro arrived in South America in 1532, the Inca empire hung at stake in civil war between two half-brothers, Atahualpa and Huascar, sons of the last Inca emperor. This war of royal succession was waged with the same military means that had won the Inca empire, and that had been gradually developed over centuries in the Andes: armies of hundreds of thousands of foot soldiers with trains of pack llamas and auxiliaries on a vast scale, led by a nobility trained from boyhood in the arts of war, and supported by a monumental infrastructure of roads, storehouses, and forts, and a taxation bureaucracy that ballooned as the empire grew.

  • STREETS AND OPEN SPACES: COMPARING MOBILITY AND URBAN FORM AT ANGAMUCO AND CHUNCHUCMIL, MEXICO

  • Scott R. Hutson, Rodrigo Solinis-Casparius
  • Journal:
    Ancient Mesoamerica / Volume 34 / Issue 2 / Summer 2023
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    28 March 2022, pp. 338-359
    Print publication:
    Summer 2023
    • Article
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  • Angamuco and Chunchucmil are two of the few Mesoamerican cities with relatively complete street maps. These maps provide a rare opportunity to study how the bulk of the population moved through cities, how people worked together to organize a network of paths and open spaces, what kind of interactions these features afforded, and how they contributed to the formation of social identities. Having found that space syntax methods confirmed intuitive understandings without generating new findings, we apply a segment (paths) and node (intersections) analysis to both sites. With these analyses we recorded and characterized segment variables such as width, length, form, and curvature, and node variables such as size, form, and number of linked segments. Many of the nodes at both sites are open spaces, allowing us to register details about the configuration of shared public spaces that are less formal than monumental plazas. The analyses revealed neighborhood differentiation, local-level coordination of labor, and intentional efforts to create markets or spaces of assembly that may have complemented collective governance proposed for both sites. While Angamuco and Chunchucmil differ in terms of the general pattern of their pedestrian networks, they share similarities in terms of density of paths and types of intersections.

War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes
  • Elizabeth N. Arkush
  • Published online:
    24 March 2022
    Print publication:
    31 March 2022
  • Warfare in the pre-Columbian Andes took on many forms, from inter-village raids to campaigns of conquest. Andean societies also created spectacular performances and artwork alluding to war – acts of symbolism that worked as political rhetoric while drawing on ancient beliefs about supernatural beings, warriors, and the dead. In this book, Elizabeth Arkush disentangles Andean warfare from Andean war-related spectacle and offers insights into how both evolved over time. Synthesizing the rich archaeological record of fortifications, skeletal injury, and material evidence, she presents fresh visions of war and politics among the Moche, Chimú, Inca, and pre-Inca societies of the conflict-ridden Andean highlands. The changing configurations of Andean power and violence serve as case studies to illustrate a sophisticated general model of the different forms of warfare in pre-modern societies. Arkush's book makes the complex pre-history of Andean warfare accessible by providing a birds-eye view of its major patterns and contrasts.

Page 15 of 130