Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T19:59:58.594Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The influence of Amazonia on state formation in the ancient Andes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 October 2018

Darryl Wilkinson
Darryl Wilkinson*
Affiliation:
* McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, Downing Street, CambridgeCB2 3ER, UK (Email: [email protected])
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The impact of Amazonia on the history and development of late prehistoric (c. AD 500–1500) Andean highland polities has been largely ignored. This article considers how shifting exchange relations between Amazonia and the Andes may have greatly influenced state-formation processes. It is argued that Arawak expansion in the Amazonian lowlands, completed by c. AD 500, was a prerequisite development for stimulating the rise of Andean highland empires, which were heavily dependent upon imported prestige Amazonian feathers. Future research directions are suggested in order to enhance our understanding of late prehistoric state formation in the Americas.

Keywords

AndesAmazoniaMiddle HorizonWarifeatherworkstate formation
Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 92 , Issue 365 , October 2018 , pp. 1362 - 1376
Copyright
© Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adelaar, W.F.H. 2006. The Quechua impact in Amuesha, an Arawak language of the Peruvian Amazon, in A. Aikhenvald & R.M.W. Dixon (ed.) Grammars in contact: a cross-linguistic typology: 290–312. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Aikhenvald, A. 1999. The Arawak language family, in R.M.W. Dixon & A. Aikhenvald (ed.) The Amazonian languages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Arroyo-Kalin, M. 2010. The Amazonian Formative: crop domestication and anthropogenic soils. Diversity 2: 473–504. https://doi.org/10.3390/d2040473 Google Scholar
Barbieri, C., Heggarty, P., Yang Yao, D., Ferri, G., De Fanti, S., Sarno, S., Ciani, G., Boattini, A., Luiselli, D. & Pettener, D.. 2014. Between Andes and Amazon: the genetic profile of the Arawak‐speaking Yanesha. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 155: 600–609. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.22616 Google Scholar
Berdan, F. 2006. Circulation of feathers in Mesoamerica. Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. https://doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.138 Google Scholar
Candler, K. 1991. Ancient plumage: featherworking in Precolumbian Peru, in R.E. Reina & K.M. Kensinger (ed.) The gift of birds: featherwork of Native South American peoples (University Museum Monograph 75): 1–15. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Cobo, B. 1990 [1653]. Inca religion and customs. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Cobo, B. 2010 [1653]. History of the Inca Empire. Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
D’Altroy, T.N. 1994. Public and private economy in the Inka Empire, in E. Brumfiel (ed.) The economic anthropology of the state: 169–221. New York: University Press of America.Google Scholar
D’Altroy, T.N. & Earle, T.K.. 1985. Staple finance, wealth finance, and storage in the Inka political economy. Current Anthropology 26: 187–206. https://doi.org/10.1086/203249 Google Scholar
DeMarrais, E., Castillo, L.J. & Earle, T.K.. 1996. Ideology, materialization, and power strategies. Current Anthropology 37: 15–31. https://doi.org/10.1086/204472 Google Scholar
Denevan, W.M. 1980. La geografía cultural aborígen de los Llanos de Mojos. La Paz: Juventud.Google Scholar
Denevan, W.M. 1992. The pristine myth: the landscape of the Americas in 1492. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 82: 369–385. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8306.1992.tb01965.x Google Scholar
Edwards, D.N. 2003. Ancient Egypt in the Sudanese Middle Nile: a case of mistaken identity?, in D. O’Connor & A. Reid (ed.) Ancient Egypt in Africa: 137–150. London: University College London Press.Google Scholar
Edwards, M.J. 2013. The configuration of built space at Pataraya and Wari provincial administration in Nasca. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 32: 565–576. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2013.09.004 Google Scholar
Edwards, M.J. & Schreiber, K.. 2014. Pataraya: the archaeology of a Wari outpost in Nasca. Latin American Antiquity 25: 215–233. https://doi.org/10.7183/1045-6635.25.2.215 Google Scholar
Eriksen, L. 2011. Nature and culture in prehistoric Amazonia: using G.I.S. to reconstruct ancient ethnogenetic processes from archaeology, linguistics, geography and ethnohistory. Unpublished PhD dissertation, Lund University.Google Scholar
Erickson, C.L. 1995. Archaeological perspectives on ancient landscapes of the Llanos de Mojos in the Bolivian Amazon, in P. Stahl (ed.) Archaeology in the American tropics: current analytical methods and applications: 66–95. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Erickson, C.L. 2008. Amazonia: the historical ecology of a domesticated landscape, in H. Silverman & W. Isbell (ed.) The handbook of South American archaeology: 157–183. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Finucane, B.C. 2009. Maize and sociopolitical complexity in the Ayacucho Valley, Peru. Current Anthropology 50: 535–545. https://doi.org/10.1086/599860 Google Scholar
Fonseca Santa Cruz, J. & Bauer, B.S.. 2013. Dating the Wari remains at Espiritu Pampa (Vilcabamba, Cusco). Andean Past 11: 111–121.Google Scholar
Frankenstein, S. & Rowlands, M.J.. 1978. The internal structure and regional context of Early Iron Age society in south-western Germany. Bulletin of the Institute of Archaeology London 15: 73–112.Google Scholar
Giuntini, C. 2006. Precolumbian and ethnographic featherwork from the Andes and Amazonia in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Nuevo Mundo Mundos Nuevos. https://doi.org/10.4000/nuevomundo.1457 Google Scholar
Glowacki, M. & Malpass, M.. 2003. Water, huacas, and ancestor worship: traces of a sacred Wari landscape. Latin American Antiquity 14: 431–448. https://doi.org/10.2307/3557577 Google Scholar
Goepfert, N. 2012. New zooarchaeological and funerary perspectives on Mochica culture (AD 100–800), Peru. Journal of Field Archaeology 37: 104–120. https://doi.org/10.1179/0093469012Z.00000000010 Google Scholar
González, J.A. 2003. Harvesting, local trade, and conservation of parrots in the northeastern Peruvian Amazon. Biological Conservation 114: 437–446. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0006-3207(03)00071-5 Google Scholar
Guaman, Poma, F., de Ayala 1936 [1615]. El primer nueva corónica y buen gobierno. Paris: Institut d’Ethnologie.Google Scholar
Heckenberger, M.J. 2002. Rethinking the Arawakan diaspora: hierarchy, regionality, and the Amazonian formative, in J.D. Hill & F. Santos-Granero (ed.) Comparative Arawakan histories: rethinking language family and culture area in Amazonia: 99–122. Chicago: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
Heckenberger, M.J. 2005. The ecology of power: culture, place, and personhood in the southern Amazon, AD 1000–2000. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Heckenberger, M.J. 2013. The Arawak diaspora, in W.F. Keegan, C.L. Hofman & R. Rodríguez Ramos (ed.) The Oxford handbook of Caribbean archaeology: 111–125. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Hodder, I. 1982. Symbols in action: ethnoarchaeological studies of material culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Honeychurch, W. 2014. Alternative complexities: the archaeology of pastoral nomadic states. Journal of Archaeological Research 22: 277–326. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-014-9073-9 Google Scholar
Hornborg, A. 2005. Ethnogenesis, regional integration, and ecology in prehistoric Amazonia: toward a system perspective. Current Anthropology 46: 589–620. https://doi.org/10.1086/431530 Google Scholar
Hornborg, A. & Hill, J.D.. 2011. Introduction: ethnicity in ancient Amazonia, in A. Hornborg & J.D. Hill (ed.) Ethnicity in ancient Amazonia: reconstructing past identities from archaeology, linguistics, and ethnohistory: 1–27. Boulder: University Press of Colorado.Google Scholar
Isbell, W.H. 2008. Wari and Tiwanaku: international identities in the Central Andean Middle Horizon, in H. Silverman & W. Isbell (ed.) The handbook of South American archaeology: 731–759. New York: Springer.Google Scholar
Jennings, J. 2010. Becoming Wari: globalization and the role of the Wari state in the Cotahuasi Valley of southern Peru, in J. Jennings (ed.) Beyond Wari walls: regional perspectives on Middle Horizon Peru: 37–56. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.Google Scholar
Jennings, J., Tung, T., Yepez Alvarez, W.J., Quequezana Lucano, G. & López Hurtado, M.A.. 2015. Shifting local, regional, and interregional relations in Middle Horizon Peru: evidence from La Real. Latin American Antiquity 26: 382–400. https://doi.org/10.7183/1045-6635.26.3.382 Google Scholar
King, H. 2012. Feather arts in ancient Peru, in H. King (ed.) Peruvian featherworks: art of the pre-Columbian era: 9–44. New Haven (CT): Yale University Press.Google Scholar
King, H. 2013. The Wari feathered panels from Corral Redondo, Churunga Valley: a re-examination of context. Ñawpa Pacha 33: 23–42.Google Scholar
Meggers, B. 1971. Amazonia: man and culture in a counterfeit paradise. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institute.Google Scholar
Newbury, D.K. 2014. Andean archaeological featherwork at the Milwaukee Public Museum: a case study in researching potential context for limited-provenience artifacts. Unpublished MSc dissertation, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.Google Scholar
O’Connor, D. 1993. Ancient Nubia: Egypt’s rival in Africa. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press.Google Scholar
Pasztory, E. 2008. Rare ancient featherwork from Peru. American Journal of Archaeology Online Museum Review 112. Available at: https://www.ajaonline.org/sites/default/files/AJA1124_Pasztory.pdf (accessed 10 August 2017). Google Scholar
Paul, A. 1990. Paracas ritual attire: symbols of authority in ancient Peru. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press.Google Scholar
Politis, G. 1995. The socio-politics of the development of archaeology in Hispanic South America, in P.J. Ucko (ed.) Theory in archaeology: a world perspective: 194–231. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Prümers, H. & Betancourt, C.J.. 2014. 100 años de investigaciones arqueológicas en los Llanos de Mojos. Arqueoantropológicas 4: 11–54.Google Scholar
Renfrew, C. 1972. The emergence of civilisation: the Cyclades and the Aegean in the third millennium BC. London: Taylor & Francis.Google Scholar
Sancho de la Hoz, P. 1968 [1534]. Relacion para Su Majestad de lo sucedico en la conquista: Biblioteca Peruana, tomo 1. Lima: Editores Tecnicos Asociados S.A.Google Scholar
Schaan, D. 2016. Sacred geographies of ancient Amazonia: historical ecology of social complexity. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Schreiber, K. 1992. Wari imperialism in Middle Horizon Peru. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Smith, M.E. & Schreiber, K.. 2006. New world states and empires: politics, religion, and urbanism. Journal of Archaeological Research 14: 1–52. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10814-005-9000-1 Google Scholar
Somerville, A., Nelson, B. & Knudson, K.. 2010. Isotopic investigation of pre-Hispanic macaw breeding in northwest Mexico. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 29: 125–135. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaa.2009.09.003 Google Scholar
Stanish, C. 2001. The origin of state societies in South America. Annual Review of Anthropology 30: 41–64. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev.anthro.30.1.41 Google Scholar
Tung, T.A. 2012. Violence, ritual, and the Wari Empire: a social bioarchaeology of imperialism in the ancient Andes. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. https://doi.org/10.5744/florida/9780813037677.001.0001 Google Scholar
Tung, T. & Knudson, K.. 2018. Stable isotope analysis of a pre‐Hispanic Andean community: reconstructing pre‐Wari and Wari-era diets in the hinterland of the Wari empire, Peru. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 165: 149–172. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajpa.23339 Google Scholar
Watson, A., Plog, S., Culleton, B., Gilman, P.A., Leblanc, S., Whiteley, P., Claramunt, S. & Kennett, D.J.. 2015. Early procurement of scarlet macaws and the emergence of social complexity in Chaco Canyon, NM. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA 112: 8238–8243. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1509825112 Google Scholar
Williams, P.R. & Nash, D.J.. 2006. Sighting the apu: a GIS analysis of Wari imperialism and the worship of mountain peaks. World Archaeology 38: 455–468. https://doi.org/10.1080/00438240600813491 Google Scholar