Estructuras andinas del poder: Ideología religiosa y política
About: This article is published in Americas.The article was published on 1984-11-01 and is currently open access. It has received 39 citations till now.
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TL;DR: The political structure of the pre-Columbian Andes took form primarily around a system of sacred ancestral relics and origin points known generically as huacas, and each huaca defined a level of political organization that might nest into units of a higher order or subdivide into smaller groupings as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: There is a strange and unacknowledged paradox in the historiography of the Incas. On the one hand, few would deny that theirs was a typically theocratic archaic state, a divine kingship in which the Inca was thought to.be the son of the Sun. On the other hand, the standard descriptions of Inca political structure barely mention religion and seem to assume a formal separation between state and cult.1 I believe that these secularizing accounts are misguided and will show in this essay that the political structure of the pre-Columbian Andes took form primarily around a system of sacred ancestral relics and origin points known generically as huacas. Each huaca defined a level of political organization that might nest into units of a higher order or subdivide into smaller groupings. Collectively they formed a segmentary hierarchy that transcended the boundaries of local ethnic polities and provided the basis for empires like that of the Incas. However, these huacas were also the focus of local kinship relations and agrarian fertility rituals. The political structure that they articulated therefore had a built-in concern for the metaphysical reproduction of human, animal, and plant life. Political power in the pre-Columbian Andes was particularly bound up with attempts to control the flow of water across the frontier of life and death, resulting in no clear distinction between ritual and administration.
96 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors address the problem of socio-political evolution in highland Peru during the Late Intermediate period (ca. 1000-1470) from the perspective of changing relationships between herders and cultivators in the Tarama-Chinchaycocha region.
Abstract: We address the general problem of .sociopolitical evolution in highland Peru during the Late Intermediate period (ca. A.D. 1000-1470) from the perspective of changing relationships between herders and cultivators in the Tarama-Chinchaycocha region. First, we use ethnographic and ethnohistoric information to help model central Andean herder-cultivator interaction. Here we emphasize the ecological and sociologicalfoundations for economic .specialization, the ritually based integration of pastoral and agricultural groups in the absence of strong state organization, and how the ritually interactive units define and maintain their borders. Second, in the light of these perspectives, we examine archaeological settlement pattern data from our study area in the central highlands of Peru. We co71clude that the Late Intermediate period was a time of significant organizational change that included new forms of ritually based local and regional integration of pastoral and agricultural economies. Third, we briefly consider the general implications of our findings for understanding organizational change throughout the central Andean highlands during the Late Intermediate period. We sugge.st that the largest and most complex Late Intermediate highland polities depended on the full integration of .specialized pastoralists and agriculturalists in those regions where both economie.s could attain maximal combined productivity in the aftermath of the breakdown of large states at the end of the Middle Horizon (ca. A.D. 600-1000). Nuestro intere'us general es la evolucion sociopolftica en la sierra peruana durante el periodo Intermedio Tardfo (ca. 1000-1470 d. C.). Tomamos en cuenta dato.s sobre patrones de a.sentamiento regional, que nos informan sobre cambios en las interacciones entre pastores y agricultores. En la primera se intenta formular un modelo para los Andes centrales, que versa sobre la interaccion entre pastores y agricultores durante el periodo Intermedio Tardfo utilizando la informacion etnogra'fica y etnohistorica. Ponemos e'nfasis en los fundamentos ecologicos y sociologicos para explicar la especializacion en la economfa, basada ritualmente en la integracion entre grupos de pastores y agricultores, frente a la ausencia de una poderosa organizacion estatal. En la segunda, a la luz de esta perspectiva, con los dato.s arqueologicos, analizamos el patron de a.sentamiento de la region Tarama-Chinchaycocha, en la sierra central del Peru. Aunque se pone e.special e'nfasis en el periodo Intermedio Tardfo, consideramos oportuna una breve explicacion .sobre lo.s antecedente.s en el horizonte Medio (ca. 600-1000 d.C.) y en el periodo Intermedio Temprano (ca. 300 a.C5.-600 d.C.). Concluimos .senalando que el periodo Intermedio Tardfo fue un tiempo en el cual ocurrieron serios cambios en la organizacion, que incluyeron a las nuevas formas locales como base de ritual y de la integracion regional en la economfa de pastores y agricultores. En la tercera, consideramos brevemente las implicacione* generales de nuestras conclu.siones .sobre los cambios en la organizacion en la sierra central durante el periodo Intermedio Tardfo. Sugerimos que los ma's grandes y complejos senorfos de esta e'poca fueron dependientes de lo.s meeanismos de integracion de pastores y agricultores, e.specialmente en las regiones serranas favorecidas, en la.s cuales ambas econombas habrfan sido beneficiadas por el ma'ximo potencial productivo en la region, dando lugar, con este hecho, a la ausencia o fracaso de grandes estado.s regionales despue's del horizonte Medio.
59 citations
01 Jan 2006
TL;DR: Bawden et al. as discussed by the authors investigated the political and economic structures in prehistoric Peru through archaeological investigations of the ritual mediation of power by different communities comprising a given polity and found that religious transformations of the Late Moche Period are usually portrayed as reactive: as reflexive (or adaptive) responses to social and ecological trauma.
Abstract: Ritual plays a fundamental role in the creation of political subjectivity and the materialization of ideological struggles, and its inextricable relationship to power has been the subject of productive anthropological inquiry (Bell 1992, 1997; Bloch 1989; Cohen 1981; Comaroff and Comaroff 1991, 1993; Kelly and Kaplan 1990; Kertzer 1988). Indeed, the analysis of religious practices, as best inferred from the material record, is critical to interpreting power relations in prehistoric societies (Brumfiel 1998; A. Joyce et al. 2001). Ritual performance and the manipulation of ceremonial space articulated differing political dispositions in the ancient Andes that variably shaped hierarchical socioeconomic systems (Moore 1996a). Therefore, political and ideological structures in prehistoric Peru can only be fully understood through archaeological investigations of the ritual mediation of power by different communities comprising a given polity. Such an approach is of particular relevance in deciphering the wide-ranging political, economic, and ideological transformations characterizing the north coast of Peru during the Late Moche Period (AD 550–800). Pervasive social unrest and environmental perturbations inaugurated the Late Moche era, and these developments appear to have resulted in the collapse of the Middle Moche state based at Cerro Blanco (Huaca del Sol and Huaca de la Luna) in the Moche Valley (Bawden 1996). The exacerbation of social tensions, the emergence of inland urban centers, and the adoption of new religious and ideological systems further define this period (Bawden 1996, 2001; Castillo 2000, 2001; Shimada et al. 1991). Political and economic disruptions are thought to have led to the reconstitution or outright rejection of traditional Moche belief systems in different regions of the north coast (Bawden 1996; Castillo 2000, 2001). In fact, religious transformations of the Late Moche Period are usually portrayed as reactive: as reflexive (or adaptive) responses to social and ecological trauma (McClelland 1990; Shimada 1994: 232–234). It is increasingly clear, however, that religious ideology, differently wielded by various agents, directly shaped the formation of alternative political and economic systems in the Late Moche Period. This is especially evident in the lower Jequetepeque Valley (also referred to as the Pacasmayo region), located 100 kms north of the
58 citations
TL;DR: In the Andes, sacrifice and related forms of ritual violence were deeply rooted cultural practices in the Anda, fundamental principles of cosmology that framed conceptions of the natural and social world and ph...
Abstract: Sacrifice and related forms of ritual violence were deeply rooted cultural practices in the Andes, fundamental principles of cosmology that framed conceptions of the natural and social world and ph...
57 citations
TL;DR: The past is a lower moiety: Diarchy, history, and divine kingship in the Inka Empire as discussed by the authors, and the past is the lower-moiety of the present.
Abstract: (1996). The past is a lower moiety: Diarchy, history, and divine kingship in the Inka Empire. History and Anthropology: Vol. 9, No. 4, pp. 383-414.
51 citations