Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jn8rn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T14:30:27.589Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

An Archaeology of the Aesthetic: Slavery and Politics at the Jesuit Vineyards of Nasca

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 October 2020

Brendan J.M. Weaver Open the ORCID record for Brendan J.M. Weaver [Opens in a new window]
Brendan J.M. Weaver*
Affiliation:
Stanford Archaeology Center Building 500488 Escondido MallP.O. Box 20446 Stanford, CA94305-2170USA Email: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This article makes the case for the utility of an aesthetic approach to the archaeological record, drawing on the philosophical work of Jacques Rancière on aesthetics and politics. The case of an archaeology of African slavery on Jesuit vineyards in colonial Peru is offered to explore nuances in power and the production of enslaved subjectivities that become visible through a consideration of aesthetic fields. Of particular interest are the aesthetics of administrative policy as materialized in space and the built environment and enslaved responses through aesthetic interventions. Rather than focusing on the specific meaning or hybridity involved in the creation of the material, a Rancièrean aesthetic approach considers how materials were potentially charged with multiple, sometimes contentious meanings through activation and engagement in the aesthetic experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Cambridge Archaeological Journal , Volume 31 , Issue 1 , February 2021 , pp. 111 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research

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

AGN = Archivo General de la Nación del PerúGoogle Scholar
ANC = Archivo Nacional de Chile, Santiago de ChileGoogle Scholar
Agbe-Davies, A.S., 2017. Where tradition and pragmatism meet: African diaspora archaeology at the crossroads. Historical Archaeology 51(1), 9–27.10.1007/s41636-017-0004-8CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Agbe-Davies, A.S., 2018. Laboring under an illusion: aligning method and theory in the archaeology of plantation slavery. Historical Archaeology 52(1), 125–39.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Alden, D., 1996. The Making of an Enterprise: The Society of Jesus in Portugal, its empire and beyond, 1540–1750. Stanford (CA): Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
AGN, 1620. Títulos de propiedad la hacienda San Joseph de la Nasca [Property titles of the hacienda San Joseph de la Nasca]. TP, Leg.8, C.165.Google Scholar
AGN, 1706. Títulos de la hacienda La Ventilla [Titles of the hacienda La Ventilla]. TP, Leg.21, C.415.Google Scholar
AGN, 1702–8. Gasto de la hacienda de San Joseph de la Nasca [Expenses of the hacienda of San Joseph de la Nasca]. C-13, Leg.128, C.1.Google Scholar
ANC, 1767a. Testimonio de la hacienda San Joseph de Nasca [Testimony of the hacienda San Joseph de la Nasca]. Vol. 344 #17.Google Scholar
ANC, 1767b. Verdadero testimonio de la hacienda de viña nombrada San Francisco Xavier de la Nasca [True testimony of the vineyard hacienda San Francisco Xavier de la Nasca], Yca. Vol. 344, #16.Google Scholar
Argenti, N. & Rötschenthaler, U., 2006. Introduction: Between Cameroon and Cuba: youth, slave trades and translocal memoryscapes. Social Anthropology 14(1), 33–47.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bailey, G.A., 1999. Art on the Jesuit Missions in Asia and Latin America, 1542–1773. Toronto: University of Toronto Press.Google Scholar
Bailey, G.A., 2010. Andean Hybrid Baroque: Convergent cultures in the churches of colonial Peru. Notre Dame (IN): University of Notre Dame Press.Google Scholar
Bates, L.A., Chenoweth, J.M. & Delle, J.A. (eds), 2016. Archaeologies of Slavery and Freedom in the Caribbean: Exploring the spaces in between. Gainesville (FL): University of Florida Press.10.5744/florida/9781683400035.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blier, S.P., 2015. Art and Risk in Ancient Yoruba: Ife history, power, and identity, c. 1300. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139128872CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Burns, M.C., 1993. Art, history, and gender: women and clay in West Africa. The African Archaeological Review 11, 129–48.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Connerton, P., 1989. How Societies Remember. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9780511628061CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Croucher, S.K., 2012. ‘A concubine is still a slave’: sexual relations and Omani colonial identities in nineteenth-century East Africa, in The Archaeology of Colonialism: Intimate encounters and sexual effects, eds. Voss, B.L. & Casella, E.C.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 67–84.Google Scholar
Cushner, N.P., 1980. Lords of the Land: Sugar, wine, and Jesuit estates of coastal Peru, 1600–1767. Albany (NY): State University of New York Press.Google Scholar
Cushner, N.P., 2002. Soldiers of God: The Jesuits in colonial America, 1567–1767. Buffalo (NY): Language Communications.Google Scholar
de Borja Medina, F., 2005. El esclavo: ¿bien mueble o persona? Algunas observaciones sobre la evangelización de negro en las haciendas jesuíticas [The slave: person or chattel? Some observations on the black evangelization at the Jesuit haciendas], in Esclavitud, economía y evangelización: Las haciendas jesuitas en la América Virreinal [Slavery, economy and evangelization: the Jesuit haciendas in colonial America], eds. Negro, S. & Marzal, M.M.. Lima: Fondo Editorial de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú, 83–122.Google Scholar
DeCorse, C., 1999. Oceans apart: Africanist perspectives of diaspora archaeology, in ‘I, too, am America’: Archaeological studies of African-American life, ed. Singleton, T.A.. Charlottesville (VA): University Press of Virginia, 132–55.Google Scholar
de la Fuente, A., 2018. Afro-Latin American art, in Afro-Latin American Studies, eds de la Fuente, A. & Andrews, G.R.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 348–405.10.1017/9781316822883CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de Sandoval, A., [1627] 1987. Un tratado sobre la esclavitud [A treatise on slavery] (ed. Vila Vilar, E.). Madrid: Alianza Editorial.Google Scholar
Fennell, C., 2007. Crossroads and Cosmologies: Diasporas and ethnogenesis in the New World. Gainesville (FL): University of Florida Press.Google Scholar
Foucault, M., 1980. Power/Knowledge: Selected interviews and other writings, 1972–1977 (ed. & trans. C. et al.). New York (NY): Pantheon Books.Google Scholar
Gosselain, O.P., 2000. Materializing identities: an African perspective. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory 7(3), 187–217.10.1023/A:1026558503986CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hamilakis, Y., 2013. Archaeology and the Senses: Human experience, memory, and afect. New York (NY): Cambridge University Press.10.1017/CBO9781139024655CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Haour, A., Manning, K., Arazi, N., et al. , 2010. African Pottery Roulettes Past and Present: Techniques, identification and distribution. Oxford: Oxbow.Google Scholar
Hauser, M.W., 2017. A political ecology of water and enslavement: water ways in eighteenth-century Caribbean plantations. Current Anthropology 58(2), 227–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Herskovits, M.J. & Herskovits, F.S., 1933. An Outline of Dahomean Religious Belief. Vol. 41. Menasha (WI): American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Jones, A.M. & Cochrane, A., 2018. The Archaeology of Art: Materials, practices, affects. London: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Liebmann, M. & Murphy, M.S. (eds), 2010. Enduring Conquests: Rethinking the archaeology of resistance to Spanish colonialism in the Americas. Santa Fe (NM): SAR Press.Google Scholar
Livingston Smith, A., 2007. Histoire du décor à la roulette en Afrique subsaharienne [History of roulette decoration in sub-Saharan Africa]. Journal of African Archaeology 5(2), 189–216.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Macera, P., 1966. Instrucciones para el manejo de las haciendas jesuitas del Perú (ss. XVI–XVIII) [Instructions for the management of the Jesuit haciendas of Peru]. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos: Facultad de Letras y Ciencias Humanas, Departamento de Historia.Google Scholar
Manning, K., 2011. Potter communities and technological tradition in the Lower Telemsi Valley, Mali. Azania Archaeological Research in Africa 46(1), 70–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marshal, L.W. (ed.), 2015. The Archaeology of Slavery: A comparative approach to captivity and coercion. (Center for Archaeological Investigations Occasional Paper 41.) Carbondale (IL): Southern Illinois University Press.Google Scholar
Martínez, G., 1977. Canto de sirena [Siren song]. Lima: Mosca Azul Editores.Google Scholar
Mayor, A., 2010. Ceramic traditions and ethnicity in the Niger Bend, West Africa. Ethnoarchaeology 2(1), 5–48.10.1179/eth.2010.2.1.5CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Negro, S., 2014. Expiación y teología de la resignación durante el siglo XVIII en las yeserías de la capilla perteneciente a la hacienda San Francisco Xavier de Nasca [Atonement and theology of resignation during the 18th century in the plasterwork of the chapel belonging to the hacienda San Francisco Xavier de Nasca], in Patrimonio, identidad y memoria [Heritage, identity and memory], eds Negro, S. & Amorós, S.. Lima: Instituto de Investigación del Patrimonio Cultural, Universidad Ricardo Palma, 175–221.Google Scholar
Norman, N.L. & Kelly, K.G., 2004. Landscape politics: the serpent ditch and the rainbow in West Africa. American Anthropologist 106(1), 98–110.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogundiran, A., 2002. Of small things remembered: beads, coweries, and cultural translations of the Atlantic experience in Yorubaland. International Journal of African Historical Studies 35(2/3), 427–57.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ogundiran, A. & Saunders, P. (eds), 2014. Materialities of Ritual in the Black Atlantic. Bloomington (IN): University of Indiana Press.Google Scholar
O'Toole, R.S., 2012. Bound Lives: Africans, Indians, and the making of race in Colonial Peru. Pittsburgh (PA): University of Pittsburgh Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rancière, J., 1995. Politics, re-identification, subjectification, in The Identity in Question, ed. Rajchman, J.. London: Routledge, 63–72.Google Scholar
Rancière, J., 2004. The Politics of Aesthetics (trans. Rockhill, G.). London: Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Rancière, J., 2009. The Emancipated Spectator (trans. Elliot, G.). London: Verso.Google Scholar
Rancière, J., 2010. Dissensus: On politics and aesthetics (ed. & trans. Corcoran, S.). London Bloomsbury Academic.Google Scholar
Rancière, J., 2016. The method of equality: politics and poetics, in Recognition or Disagreement: A critical encounter on the politics of freedom, equality, and identity, by Rancière, J. & Honneth, A., eds Genel, K. & Deranty, J.. New York (NY): Columbia University Press, 133–55.Google Scholar
Rice, P., 2012. Vintage Moquegua: History, wine, and archaeology on a colonial Peruvian periphery. Austin (TX): University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Rocca Torres, L.R., 2010. El libro prohibido: Afrodescendientes, sexo y religión [The forbidden book: Afro-descendants, sex and religion]. Zaña (Peru): Museo Afroperuano.Google Scholar
Rodríguez-Camilloni, H., 2006. The rural churches of the Jesuit haciendas on the southern Peruvian coast, in The Jesuits II: Cultures, sciences, and the arts, 1540–1773, eds O'Malley, J.W., Bailey, G.A., Harris, S.J. & Kennedy, T.F.. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 240–61.Google Scholar
Rovira, B.E., 1989. Arqueología histórica del conjunto jesuítico de Nuestra Señora de la Candelaria Provincia de Misiones. PhD dissertation, Universidad Nacional de La Plata.Google Scholar
Ruppel, T., Neuwirth, J., Leone, M.P. & Fry, G-M., 2003. Hidden in view: African spiritual spaces in North American landscapes. Antiquity 77, 321–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schoenbrun, D., 2016. Pythons worked: constellating communities of practice with conceptual metaphor in Northern Lake Victoria, ca. A.D. 800 to 1200, in: Knowledge in Motion: Constellations of learning across time and place, eds Roddick, A.P. & Stahl, A.B.. Tucson (AZ): University of Arizona Press, 216–46.Google Scholar
Silliman, S.W., 2001. Theoretical perspectives on labor and colonialism: reconsidering the California missions. Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 20, 379–407.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Silliman, S.W., 2017. A requiem for hybridity? The problem with Frankensteins, purées, and mules. Journal of Social Archaeology 15(3), 277–98.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, A.T., 2015a. The Political Machine: Assembling sovereignty in the Bronze Age Caucasus. Princeton (NJ): Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Smith, A.T., 2015b. Discussant comments from the Symposium Archaeological Approaches to Subjectification. Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, San Francisco, California, 18 April 2015.Google Scholar
Smith, G.C., 1997. Hispanic, Andean, and African influences in the Moquegua Valley of southern Peru. Historical Archaeology, 31(1), 74–83.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Soper, R., 1985. Decoration on African pottery: technical considerations, dating and distributions. African Archaeological Review 3, 29–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stahl, A.B. 2008a. The slave trade as practice and memory: what are the issues for archaeologists? in Invisible Citizens: Captives and their consequences, ed. Cameron, C.M.. Salt Lake City (UT): University of Utah Press, 25–56.Google Scholar
Stahl, A.B., 2008b. Dogs, pythons, pots, and beads: the dynamics of shrines and sacrificial practices in Banda, Ghana, 1400–1900 CE, in Memory Work: Archaeologies of material practices, eds Mills, B.J. & Walker, W.H.. Santa Fe: School for Advanced Research Press, 159–86.Google Scholar
Sweet, D.G., 1978. Black robes and ‘black destiny’: Jesuit views of African slavery in 17th century Latin America. Revista de Historia de América 86, 87–133.Google Scholar
Weaver, B.J.M., 2015. ‘Fruit of the Vine, Work of Human Hands’: An Archaeology and Ethnohistory of Slavery on the Jesuit Wine Haciendas of Nasca, Peru. PhD dissertation, Vanderbilt University.Google Scholar
Weaver, B.J.M., 2018. Rethinking the political economy of slavery: the hacienda aesthetic at the Jesuit vineyards of Nasca, Peru. Post-Medieval Archaeology 52(1), 117–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Weaver, B.J.M., Muñoz, L.A. & Durand, K., 2019. Supplies, status, and slavery: the contested aesthetics of provisioning at the Jesuit haciendas of Nasca. International Journal of Historical Archaeology 23(4), 1011–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheat, D., 2016. Atlantic Africa and the Spanish Caribbean, 1570–1640. Chapel Hill (NC): UNC Press.Google Scholar
Yelvington, K.A., 2001. The anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the Caribbean: diasporic dimensions. Annual Review of Anthropology 30, 227–60.CrossRefGoogle Scholar