Constructions of Time and History in the Pre-Columbian Andes

Edward Swenson, Andrew Roddick, Edward Swenson, Andrew Roddick

• Publisher: University Press of Colorado
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9781607326410
• eBook ISBN:
  9781607326427
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Archaeology
• Index: Social Sciences

Constructions of Time and History in the Pre-Columbian Andes explores archaeological approaches to temporalities, social memory, and constructions of history in the pre-Columbian Andes. The authors examine a range of indigenous temporal experiences and ideologies, including astronomical, cyclical, generational, eschatological, and mythical time.

This nuanced, interdisciplinary volume challenges outmoded anthropological theories while building on an emic perspective to gain greater understanding of pre-Columbian Andean cultures. Contributors to the volume rethink the dichotomy of past and present by understanding history as indigenous Andeans perceived it—recognizing the past as a palpable and living presence. We live in history, not apart from it. Within this framework time can be understood as a current rather than as distinct points, moments, periods, or horizons.

The Andes offer a rich context by which to evaluate recent philosophical explorations of space and time. Using the varied materializations and ritual emplacements of time in a diverse sampling of landscapes, Constructions of Time and History in the Pre-Columbian Andes serves as a critique of archaeology's continued and exclusive dependence on linear chronologies that obscure historically specific temporal practices and beliefs.

Contributors: Tamara L. Bray, Zachary J. Chase, María José Culquichicón-Venegas, Terence D'Altroy, Giles Spence Morrow, Matthew Sayre, Francisco Seoane, Darryl Wilkinson

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgments
• One Introduction: Rethinking Temporality and Historicity from the Perspective of Andean Archaeology
• Two The Historicity of the “Early Horizon”
• Three Disordering the Chronotope and Visualizing Inhabitation in the Lake Titicaca Basin
• Four The Past as Kin: Materiality and Time in Inka Landscapes
• Five Past-Forward Past Making: Late Pre-Hispanic and Early Colonial Andean Archaeology and History
• Six Topologies of Time and History in Jequetepeque, Peru
• Seven Scaling the Huaca: Synecdochal Temporalities and the Mimetic Materialization of Late Moche Timescapes
• Eight Hitching the Present to the Stars: The Architecture of Time and Space in the Ancient Andes
• Nine Archaeology, Temporal Complexity, and the Politics of Time
• List of Contributors
• Index