Rituals of the Past: Prehispanic and Colonial Case Studies in Andean Archaeology

Abstract

This excellent and thought-provoking volume begins with a brief description of the annual Virgen del Carmen ritual in Ancash, Peru. The opening vignette illustrates the contributors’ fundamental message: ritual should be interpreted as “more than ritual for its own sake” (Rosenfeld and Bautista 2017: 9). In Rituals of the Past, the editors have brought together an impressive group of senior and emerging scholars of Andean South America. Bookended by an introduction that provides a concise summary of the theoretical lenses that have been applied to the anthropological study of ritual and by a thoughtful concluding discussion by Jerry D. Moore, the ten case studies encompass significant temporal range and methodological scope. Largely chronologically ordered, they begin with John W. Rick’s overview of ritual spaces at Chavin de Huantar as early as 1200 BC and end with Hendrik Van Gijseghem and Verity H. Whalen’s fascinating discussion of contemporary toponyms in the Nazca valley.Archaeological investigations dominate and collectively support the editors’ assertion that even if archaeologists have been relatively slow to recognize the importance of ritual, its repetitive nature makes ritual archaeologically visible. Included archaeological case studies span the pre-Hispanic period, although they are strongly skewed toward earlier contexts, with five chapters on the Formative Period. In addition to established excavation-based approaches, the volume includes innovative spatial and GIS data to explore movement through architectural space and the visibility of monuments (in the contributions by Rafael Vega-Centeno Sara-Lafosse and David Chicoine et al). As Moore notes, Axel E. Nielsen, Carlos I. Angiorama, and Florencia Ávila’s discussion of mountain shrines is an exception in a volume that focuses heavily on the built environment. Given the significance of natural features in long-standing Andean ritual traditions, the comparative lack of landscape analyses may surprise readers. Beyond the methodological range of the archaeological contributions, the inclusion also of ethnohistorical, historical, and linguistic data and the effective combination of multiple data types in some of the individual case studies (such as in Sarah Abrams’s chapter on early colonial religious architecture) are a particular strength of the volume that demonstrates the interpretive potential of an interdisciplinary perspective on ritual.Shared themes include social memory, cosmology, and termination rituals (by Matthew J. Edwards for the Middle Horizon as well as Camila Capriata Estrada and Enrique López-Hurtado for the Late Intermediate Period site of Panquilma), but most recurrent in the volume is a focus on how ritual spaces and practices are embedded in and constitutive of power relations. Notably, contributing authors are not bound by a single definition of ritual. While some readers may find this to be skirting a significant issue, the lack of a shared definition affords individual scholars a flexibility that ultimately highlights the multiple ways in which ritual intersects with and contributes to daily practice, household activity (explored by Francesca Fernandini and Mario Ruales at Cerro del Oro), political negotiations and organization (in Daniel A. Contreras’s interpretation of multiple ritual foci at Chavin de Huantar as evidence of heterarchy), and social transformation (in Yoshio Onuki’s argument that temple renovation led to significant developments in the Formative highlands).Timely and ambitious, Rituals of the Past seeks to examine how ritual participated in wider social transformations and negotiations in the pre-Hispanic, colonial, and postcolonial Andes. Not only successful in this endeavor but also showcasing diverse approaches to ritual in the past, this volume makes a significant contribution to growing scholarship on Andean ritual and will be of importance beyond its particular regional focus.