Mary J Weismantel

Race in the Andes: Global Movements and Popular Ontologies

Abstract Race, long discounted in Andean ethnography as relatively unimportant, is a social fact of great salience in the Andes. This essay introduces the articles in the special issue on race in the Andes with an overview of the interrelated intellectual histories of racism in the Andes, Europe and North America, from colonial proto-racism, to the totalising theories of the 19th century, to the heterogeneous ‘neo-racism’ found in the Andes today, in which both these earlier ideas and contemporary cultural racisms are at home. It concludes with a discussion of an oppositional ideology found in some indigenous communities, in which race is somatic but not biological in origin.

White cannibals: Fantasies of racial violence in the Andes

This paper challenges the commonly‐held view that race is relatively unimportant in the Andes, as elsewhere in Latin America. The terrifying white man known as the nakaq, a ubiquitous figure in Andean folklore, points to the constant presence of racial fear and hatred within rural indigenous societies, as well as in urban zones. Analysis of the nakaq as an indigenous representation of racial violence does not displace class and nation, gender and sexuality as foci of inquiry, but rather reveals the articulation of all of these within race itself. Further, the frequent identification of anthropologists as nakaqs speaks to specific anthropological practices that reinforce the destructive relationship between Indian and white, despite ethnographys potential as an anti‐racist discourse.

Seeing like an archaeologist: Viveiros de Castro at Chavín de Huantar:

This article juxtaposes Viveiros de Castro’s theory of ‘perspectivism’ with carved stone monoliths from the Peruvian site of Chavín de Huantar to explore the interactions between humans, animals, and things in Pre-Columbian material culture. Using insights from new work on animal/human relations and the ethnography of shamanism and hunting, it illuminates aspects of the iconography, scale, and style of the stones that were previously opaque. Finally, it challenges archaeologists to address the limitations of perspectivism, notably its abstraction and ahistoricism, avoiding the retrogressive return to romantic primitivism that sometimes mars the ontological turn, thus transforming perspectivism into a better means of political engagement with indigenous Americans present and past.

Substances: ‘Following the material’ through two prehistoric cases

In this article, we argue for a multi-dimensional research strategy incorporating material, social and phenomenological analysis in the study of figurines and other human effigies. We call this approach ‘following the material’. To illustrate, we examine two case studies: figurines from the Neolithic site of Çatalhöyük (Turkey) and human effigies from the Formative region of Moche (Peru). We look first at the material substances from which artifacts are made and the material contexts in which they were produced, circulated and deposited, before turning to analysis of the representation of the body. This enables us to see these objects as themselves bodies – not merely imperfect replicas of actual humans, but material objects made of substances that afford particular kinds of interactions between fleshly and artifactual bodies. This focus on the materiality of artifacts reveals tight connections between objects in human form, material culture, environment, landscape, and political economy.

Inhuman eyes: Looking at Chavín de Huantar

1. Relational archaeologies: roots and routes Christopher Watts 2. Inhuman eyes: looking at Chavin de Huantar Mary Weismantel 3. Theater of predation: beneath the skin of Gobekli Tepe images Dusan Boric 4. The bear-able likeness of being: ursine remains at the Shamanka II cemetery, Lake Baikal, Siberia Robert J. Losey, Vladimir I. Bazaliiskii, Angela R. Lieverse, Andrea Waters-Rist, Kate Faccia, and Andrzej W. Weber 5. Between the living and the dead: relational ontologies and the ritual dimensions of dugong hunting across Torres Strait Ian J. McNiven 6. Methodological and analytical challenges in relational archaeologies: a view from the hunting ground Maria Nieves Zedeno 7. Identity communities and material practices: relational logics in the U.S. Southwest Wendi Field Murray and Barbara J. Mills 8. Intimate connection: bodies and substances in flux in the early Neolithic of central Europe Daniela Hofmann 9. Relational communities in prehistoric Britain Oliver J. T. Harris 10. Shifting horizons and emerging ontologies in the Bronze Age Aegean Andrew Shapland 11. Classicism and knowing the world in early modern Sweden Vesa-Pekka Herva and Jonas M. Nordin 12. The imbrication of human and animal paths: an Arctic case study Peter Whitridge 13. The maze and the labyrinth: reflections of a fellow-traveller Tim Ingold

Race rape: White masculinity in Andean pishtaco tales

A figure from Andean popular culture, the pishtaco, illuminates the relationship between white racism and sexual violence. Usually spoken of as a white killer of Indians, the pishtaco is often described as a rapist of both men and women, and a castrator of men. The destructive masculinity of the pishtaco resembles that found in other Latin American oral genres, such as Mexicano humor. The intersection of race and sex complicates the analysis, however: these tales present both race and sex as performative rather than essential; indeed, because Indian masculinity is presented as crucially different than white male‐ness, the historically contingent nature of male violence is underscored.

Encounters with dragons: The stones of Chavín

to John Rick, who was very generous to me when I visited Chavín, and to several colleagues at Northwestern, including Lars Tønder, who guided me in my forays into the writings of Merleau-Ponty, and Michelle Molina, Jorge Coronado, Elizabeth Brumfiel, Ann Gunter, and Mark Hauser, who listened to earlier versions of this project. I am also grateful to several readers of my initial draft, including Gary Urton, Tom Cummins, Cecelia Klein, Joanne Pillsbury, and three anonymous reviewers, whose suggestions and corrections I have tried to address in this version of the article. Needless to say, all errors of fact and interpretation are entirely my own. 1. Merleau-Ponty 2007 [1942]:6. 2. It is unlikely, of course, that the people who originally made and used the objects that we describe as “art” had a concept or term anything like what we mean by the word. This problem is not restricted to pre-Columbian studies; the field of art history encompasses many such periods—including all of European art before the eighteenth century. For discussion of this issue, see Pasztory (2005) and Dean (2006). Nonetheless, we must use modern terms to speak of ancient things, and the field of “pre-Columbian art” refers to an established area of scholarship—a modern thing best labeled by this modern, if somewhat inapposite, term. Similarly, I use the term “art” to refer to the pre-Columbian objects studied by Jackson Pollock, since he understood them to be comparable to his own paintings. 3. A full discussion of these works would require three things: comparison to other media in use at Chavín de Huántar, such as ceramics and metallurgy; comparison to contemporaneous and later art styles in the Andes; and a fuller discussion of the relationship between art and architecture. Space does not allow me to address these issues here. I have addressed the latter in a previous publication (Weismantel 2011). 4. In the sense of “thick description” (Geertz 1973). “. . . the perceived possesses in itself a hidden and inexhaustible richness . . .” —Maurice Merleau-Ponty1

Peruvian Street Lives: Culture, Power and Economy among Market Women of Cuzco (review)

Open-air markets are a challenge to the scholarly writer. Experientially, they are an assault on the senses, stimulating and overwhelming. But beneath the surface lies a complex structure that offers daunting problems to the analyst, comprising as it does layer upon layer of activities, networks, and relationships that are at once public and private, formal and informal. For the most part, despite being such a familiar and highly visible aspect of the cities where they operate, these institutions remain woefully understudied, their rich social lives undocumented and their economic import unknown. The written records that do exist tend towards two extremes: the occasional vivid but impressionistic glimpses found in travel books, and the sporadically published, dryly analytical studies produced by development experts. Linda Seligmanns ethnography of market women in Cuzco, Peru easily bridges these two extremes. As a cultural anthropologist, she is both an alert observer who has participated in the day-to-day life of the markets for many years, and a careful researcher who provides background information on the social, economic, religious and political life of the women who work in them. Her book is generously filled with lively details that make Cuzco come alive for the reader, but she also scrupulously attempts to explain many aspects of market organization that are invisible to the casual onlooker.

Sexual Revolutions: Gender and Labor at the Dawn of Agriculture. Jane Peterson. 2002. AltaMira Press, Walnut Creek California, xiii + 178 pages.

This short scholarly study by bioarchaeologist Jane Peterson is a model scientific monograph, equally valuable to specialists and novices alike in a wide variety of fields: Middle Eastern archaeology, Neolithic agriculture, gender studies, and bioarchaeology, as well as the study of human social evolution. It asks bold questions about the transition from foraging to agropastoralism in the Levant, and offers carefully constructed answers based on rigorously analyzed and clearly presented empirical data. The centerpiece of the book is Chapter 5, which presents the authors dissertation research, an analysis of musculoskeletal stress markers in order to deduce the forms of labor an individual preformed during life, using skeletal material from sites in Israel, Palestine, and Jordan from approximately 12,000-5,000 B.P. Each of the four preceding chapters summarizes the current state of knowledge from one relevant field of study. Chapter 1 is a pithy reprise of theories about male and female work patterns before and after the agricultural revolution; Chapter 2 deals with the archaeology of the Southern Levant from the end of the Paleolithic through the Neolithic to the Early Bronze Age; Chapter 3 explains the bioarchaeological study of skeletal markers of occupational stress; and Chapter 4 covers previous skeletal studies from the Levant. The concluding chapter, Chapter 6, offers new possible scenarios for the changing relationship between gender and work as Levantines became farmers.