Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin

390 Pages·2008·12.58 MB·English

by  Rex Koontz (auth.)

Pre-Columbian Landscapes
of Creation and Origin
John Edward Staller
Editor
Pre-Columbian Landscapes
of Creation and Origin
Editor:
John Edward Staller
The Field Museum
Chicago, IL
USA
ISBN: 978-0-387-76909-7 e-ISBN: 978-0-387-76910-3
DOI: 10.1007/978-0-387-76910-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2008921354
© 2008 Springer Science + Business Media, LLC
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Front cover, top left:
(Figure 6.5 in book) The Toboroche, a common tree with a swollen trunk, stands in mid-road here. This
is the type of tree that figures in the Fox story about the origin of the Parapeti River (Photo courtesy of
CPI-Chaco, Santa Cruz, Bolivia).
Front cover, background:
(Figure 6.9 in book) Parapeti River dunes, created and moved by fierce winter winds, are shown below
a typical summer sky. (Photo courtesy of CPI-Chaco, Santa Cruz, Bolivia).
Printed on acid-free paper
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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“Draw not nigh hither,” said the Lord to
Moses, “put off thy shoes from off thy feet,
for the place whereon thou standest is holy
ground” (Exodus 3, 5).
Mircea Eliade on the heterogeneity
of geographic space…
“… some parts of space are qualitatively
different from others… this spatial non-
homogeneity finds expression in the experience
of an opposition between space that is
sacred — the only real and real-ly existing
space — and all other space, the formless
expanse surrounding it.” The realization of the
heterogeneity of space is “… a primordial
experience… It is not a matter of theoretical
speculation, but of a primary religious
experience that precedes all reflection on the
world. For it is the break effected in space that
allows the world to be constituted, because it
reveals the fixed point, the central axis for all
future orientation. When the sacred manifests
itself in any hierophany, there is not only a
break in the homogeneity of space; there is
also revelation of an absolute reality, opposed
to the nonreality of the vast surrounding
expanse. (1959 pp. 20–21)
This volume is dedicated to Claude Levi Strauss and the late
Mircea Eliade, for their inspiration and many profound insights
into the cultural and mythic landscapes of creation and origin,
both in the Americas and throughout the world.
vii
Contents
An Introduction to Pre-Columbian Landscapes
of Creation and Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
John E. Staller
1 Ballcourt Rites, Paradise, and the Origins of Power
in Classic Veracruz. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Rex Koontz
2 Landscape and a Visual Narrative of Creation and Origin
at the Olmec Ceremonial Center of La Venta. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 31
Carolyn E. Tate
3 Maya Caves Across Time and Space: Reading-Related
Landscapes in K’iche’ Maya Text, Ritual and History . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
Duncan Earle
4 Places of Emergence: Sacred Mountains
and Cofradía Ceremonies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
Allen J. Christenson
5 Over Distant Waters: Places of Origin and Creation
in Colonial K’iche’an Sources. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 123
Frauke Sachse
6 Fox Walker on the Parapeti River, Bolivia:
The Origins of How We Guarani Live in Íví. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
Elio Ortiz, Antonio Mendez, Alejo Zarzycki O.,
and Janis Bristol Alcorn
7 Where the Land and the Ocean Meet: The Engoroy Phase
Ceremonial Site at Salango, Ecuador, 600–100BC. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
Richard Lunniss
ix
x Contents
8 The Astronomical Significance of Ritual Movements
in the Calendar of Cuzco. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
R. Tom Zuidema
9 Dimensions of Place: The Significance of Centers
to the Development of Andean Civilization:
An exploration of the Ushnu Concept . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
John E. Staller
10 High Altitude Ushnu Platforms in the Department
of Ayacucho Peru, Structure, Ancestors and Animating Essence. . . 315
Frank M. Meddens, Nicholas P. Branch,
Cirilo Vivanco Pomacanchari, Naomi Riddiford, and Rob Kemp
11 Representation, Memory, and Power:
Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin . . . . . . . . . . . . . 357
Brian Stross
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 379
Contributors
Janis B. Alcorn
Garfi eld Foundation, Chevy Chase, Maryland, USA, and Department
of Anthropology, The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA
Nicholas P. Branch
Royal Holloway of the University of London, Egham, County Surrey, UK
Allen J. Christenson
Department of Humanities, Classics, and Comparative Literature
Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, USA
Duncan MacLean Earle
Department of Anthropology and International Development and Environment,
School of International Service, American University, Washington D.C., USA
Rob Kemp
Royal Holloway of the University of London, Egham, County Surrey,
United Kingdom
Rex Koontz
School of Art, University of Houston, Houston, TX, USA
Richard Lunniss
Centro de Investigaciones y Museo Salango, Salango, Cantón Puerto López,
Manabí Province, Ecuador
Frank M. Meddens
Royal Holloway of the University of London, Egham, County Surrey,
United Kingdom
Antonio Mendez
Fundación Yeporaka, Camiri, Bolivia
Elio Ortiz
Fundación Yeporaka, Camiri, Bolivia
xi
xii Contributors
Cirilo Vivanco Pomacanchari
Facultad Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Cristobal de Huamanga,
Ayacucho, Peru
Naomi Riddiford
Royal Holloway of the University of London, Egham, County Surrey, UK
Frauke Sachse
Institut fuer Altamerikanistik und Ethnologie, University of Bonn, Bonn, Germany
John E. Staller
Department of Anthropology, The Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago,
IL, USA
Brian Stross
Department of Anthropology, University of Texas, Austin, TX, USA
Carolyn E. Tate
School of Art, Texas Tech University, Lubbock, TX, USA
Alejo Zarzycki
Fundación Yangareko, Santa Cruz, Bolivia
R. Tom Zuidema
Department of Anthropology, University of Illinois, Urbana, IL, USA
An Introduction to Pre-Columbian Landscapes
of Creation and Origin
John E. Staller
The contributions presented in this volume explore the various ways in which
Native Americans related to their natural surroundings and how these associations
were at various levels, linked to their mythological beginnings, their cultural identi-
ties, political power, right to rule, and to providing meaning to their cultural
traditions and to those values and beliefs that gave their lives purpose. This volume
on pre-Columbian landscapes is in part a product of long-standing research
interests on the symbolic significance of landscapes and flora and the role of the
geography to early plant domestication (Staller, 2001, 2006a,b). The scholarly
essays presented in this volume should be of interest to anthropologists, archaeolo-
gists, folklorists, art historians, and cultural geographers, particularly those familiar
with the Mesoamerican and Andean literature, as well as students and scholars of
Pre-Columbian Studies. For the past two decades, landscape approaches have
become increasingly popular in the classics and prehistoric literature both in North
America and abroad. Most of the recent published research on ancient landscapes
has been focused upon the placement and interrelationships of monuments and
monumental architecture through phenomenological constructs, viewing space, and
how such places are perceived and experienced by the analyst (Bradley, 1998;
Bender and Aitken, 1998; Tilley, 1993, 1994, 2004). These scholarly analyses have,
with few exceptions, reported upon ancient Eurasian landscapes where a lack of
written accounts has challenged art historians and archaeologists to develop meth-
odological approaches to understand the ambiguities of ancient monuments and
how they relate to ancient political and religious ideology (Williams, 1985; Bradley,
2000; Tilley, 1991, 2004; Tilley and Miller, 1984). The contributions herein provide
methodological and analytical examples of how research on ancient landscapes can
be carried out where historical written records are available for some parts of the
region and where the indigenous descendents of these ancient cultures in some
cases continue to practice rituals and make pilgrimages or offerings to such places.
Such cultural practices speak to an intrinsic link between such cultures and their
natural surroundings.
The Western epistemological distinction between culture and nature has to a
large degree hindered the social sciences in general and anthropology in particular
in effectively addressing the consequences of ideology and cosmology to human
behavior (Tilley and Bennett, 2001:335–336, 360–361). Enlightenment constructs
J. E. Staller (ed.), Pre-Columbian Landscapes of Creation and Origin. 1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2008