The mountain embodied : head shaping and personhood in the ancient Andes / Matthew C. Velasco.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Velasco, Matthew Carlos.

Series:

Linda Schele series in Maya and pre-Columbian studies.

The Linda Schele series in Maya and pre-Columbian studies

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Deformities, Artificial--Political aspects--Peru--Colca River Valley (Arequipa)--History--To 1500.

Deformities, Artificial.

Deformities, Artificial--Social aspects--Peru--Colca River Valley (Arequipa)--History--To 1500.

Skull--Artificial deformities--Political aspects--History--To 1500.

Skull.

Skull--Artificial deformities--Social aspects--History--To 1500.

Indians of South America--Peru--Colca River Valley (Arequipa)--Antiquities.

Indians of South America.

Indians of South America--Craniology--Peru--Colca River Valley (Arequipa).

Indians of South America--Peru--Colca River Valley (Arequipa)--Social life and customs--History--To 1500.

Group identity--Peru--Colca River Valley (Arequipa)--History--To 1500.

Group identity.

Ethnohistory--Peru--Colca River Valley (Arequipa).

Ethnohistory.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (280 pages) : illustrations (some color), maps

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Austin : University of Texas Press, 2025.

Summary:

"The ancient Andean practice of head-shaping--literally binding and reshaping an infant's head--has long served as a convenient marker of ethnic identity. What is less understood is what it meant within the cultures that practiced it. Head shaping was entangled with the politics of gender, kinship, and status at the local level, leading to different life experiences even among those with similar head shape. The approach strikes me as a kind of ancient intersectionalism; the author suggests we can think of head shape as we sometimes do skin color--it creates different conditions for different individuals based on many factors. Velasco is drawing on both ethnohistory and the actual bones to understand how head shaping functioned in the making of personhood for the people of Peru's Colca Valley. By situating cranial modification in both a local cultural history and in the individual life histories written in bone, he argues for a more dynamic understanding of what it meant to be modified--one that takes seriously the Indigenous worldviews and practices that animated relations between mountains and the heads shaped to resemble them"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Of heads and mountains

The specter of ethnicity

The substance of personhood

Emergence and entombment

Embodiment and life course

Becoming the mountain.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record and CIP data provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

Description based on publisher supplied metadata and other sources.

ISBN:

1-4773-3152-2

1-4773-3153-0

OCLC:

1521500614