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Heads of state : icons, power, and politics in the ancient and modern Andes / Denise Y. Arnold, Christine A. Hastorf.

Penn Museum Library F2230.1.P65 A76 2008
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Format:
Book
Author/Creator:
Arnold, Denise Y.
Contributor:
Hastorf, Christine Ann, 1950-
Language:
English
Subjects (All):
Indians of South America--Andes Region--Politics and government.
Indians of South America.
Politics and government.
Head--Religious aspects.
Head.
Kings and rulers.
History.
Andes Region.
Indians of South America--Andes Region--Kings and rulers.
Indians of South America--Andes Region--Antiquities.
Antiquities.
Kings and rulers--Andes Region--History.
Head--Political aspects--Andes Region.
Head--Religious aspects--Andes Region.
Andes Region--Politics and government.
Andes Region--Antiquities.
Physical Description:
293 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm
Place of Publication:
Walnut Creek, CA : Left Coast Press, [2008]
Summary:
The human head has had important political, ritual and symbolic meanings throughout Andean history. Scholars have spoken of captured and trophy heads, curated crania, symbolic flying heads, head imagery on pots and on stone, head-shaped vessels, and linguistic references to the head. In this synthesizing work, cultural anthropologist Denise Arnold and archaeologist Christine Hastorf examine the cult of heads in the Andes past and presentto develop a theory of its place in indigenous cultural practice and its relationship to political systems. Using ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork, highland-lowland comparisons, archival documents, oral histories, and ritual texts, the authors draw from Marx, Mauss, Foucault, Assadourian, Viveiros del Castro and other theorists to show how heads shape and symbolize power, violence, fertility, identity, and economy in South American cultures.
Contents:
Headhunting in the Andes 20
The Models in Play 22
Ancestral and Enemy Heads: Interweaving Identities 26
Heads and the Regeneration of Life 28
The Ancestral Dead, Identity, and Andean Polities 30
Part I The Ethnography of Andean Head Taking and Power 35
1 Heads in Small-scale Polities 37
Toward a Theory of Heads in Expanding Polities 37
The Fetishism of Heads as Protected Things 44
Heads and the Powers of Regeneration 47
The Nature of These Powers of Regeneration 50
Transformations in Values and the Fetishism of Commodities Revisited 58
Why a Head? 60
Flying Heads 65
2 The Captured Fetish, the Mountain Chest, and Sacrifice 71
The Concentration of a Head's Powers 72
The Counting Boards Called Yupana and the Spirit of Calculation 80
3 Drinking the Power of the Dead 91
Sucking out of a Skull 91
The Patterns of Drinking Pathways 94
Toward an Iconography of Drinking, Social Memory, and Warfare 96
Visual Representations on Colonial Qirus of the Potent Energy of Trophy Heads 99
The Space above the Feline Head 103
4 The Nested Power of Modern Andean Hierarchies 107
Personal Heads 108
Initiation Rites 109
Household Heads 110
Gendered Heads and the Parallelism of Warriors and Weavers 114
Ayllu Heads 117
Heads as Holders of Power; Holders of Power as Heads 117
The Vara Staff of Office 121
The Geopolitical Place of Heads in the Major Ayllu Formation and Beyond 124
The Ayllu Political Center 126
The Ritual of Expanding Power Outward: Willja 130
The Ayllu Boundaries 132
From Ayllu Limits to Ayllu Center 132
The Postwar Remaking of Regional Relations between Ayllus 133
The Major Ayllu within a Wider Andean State 137
Early State Bureaucracies and the Management of Heads 139
Weaving and Kipu Practices at the Service of the State 139
Part II The Archaeology of Andean Head Taking and Power 147
5 Heads and the Consolidation of Andean Political Power 149
The Dual Political Forces that Patterned Past Community Formation 150
Heads of State 152
Heads and Ancestral Power 154
The Mallki 154
Remembered Bones 156
Heads and Rains 157
Ancestral Heads in Archaeological Settings 161
Rituals Centered around Tombs, Body Parts, and Images of the Dead 163
The Natitas of Contemporary La Paz 163
Bodily Relations in Architectonic Form 166
6 Heads and Andean Political Change from an Archaeological Perspective 169
The South-Central Andes 169
The South Coast 169
Paracas 169
Nasca 176
The Lake Titicaca Region 182
The Formative Phases 182
The Middle Formative: Chiripa 187
Late Formative/Early Intermediate Period (Tiwanaku I, III): Pukara 190
Middle Horizon Tiwanaku 192
Middle Horizon State Developments: Wari 196
7 Central Andean Political Developments 205
Early Ceremonial Centers of the Central and North-Central Andes 205
North-Central Peruvian Coast 209
The Late Intermediate Period 211
Late Horizon 212
The Inka and the Colonial Period 212
1 Heads as Symbols of Political Power 218
2 Heads and Regeneration 220
3 Heads, Violence, and Fertility 223
4 The Language of Heads 224
5 The Body Politic 226
6 Heads and Political Systems 227
7 Heads as Constructors of Social and Cultural Identity and Difference 229
8 Heads as Part of Economic Transactions 230
9 The Guarding and Maintenance of Heads 232
Sites and Toponyms Mentioned in the Text 235
Andean Cultural Sequences 239.
Notes:
Includes bibliographical references (pages 257-279) and index.
ISBN:
9781598741704
1598741705
9781598741711
1598741713
OCLC:
166255072

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