Violence, Indigeneity, and Archaeological Interpretation in the Central Andes

Chapter 12 Violence, Indigeneity, and Archaeological Interpretation in the Central Andes Elizabeth Arkush Abstract Potential archaeological evidence of violence is usually somewhat ambiguous: it can be interpreted in different ways. I argue that our archaeological interpretations are strongly conditioned by – among other factors – the history of representations of indigeneity. In the central Andes, we must contend with unsavory stereotypes of indigenous Andeans as backward, “tough,” and liable to irrational violence. These old but newly reconfi gured stereotypes are drawn on for political purposes by both criollo urbanites and Quechua- and Aymara-speaking Andeans themselves. Opposed to them are positive but problematic images of indigenous Andeans steeped in ritual and existing in harmony with society and nature, images with a pedigree in early twentieth-century romantic nativism and in mid-century structuralist anthropology. These stereotypes too are strategically consumed and perpetrated by the crafters of nationalist narratives, the tourism and artesania industries, and self-identifi ed indigenous Andeans. In the oversimplifi ed terms of public imagination, spiritual Andeans are opposed to violent Andeans. This problematic dyad politicizes archaeological interpretation while impoverishing the space of its possibilities, constraining archaeologists to choose between interpretations of the past that seem either distastefully savage or falsely idyllic. Before archaeologists begin to make decisions about reporting indigenous violence, they must fi rst make interpretations about whether violence occurred, of what kind, with what implicit repercussions for our image of the past perpetrators and victims. What affects these decisions, when the evidence is ambiguous (as it often is), and leaves open more than one avenue of interpretation? Other, less scientifi c things are at play, on conscious and unconscious levels: our mingled repugnance and fascina- tion at violence, our loyalty to the people we study, our personal politics, and the E. Arkush, Ph.D. (*) Department of Anthropology , University of Pittsburgh , 3302 Posvar Hall , Pittsburgh , PA 15260 , USA e-mail: [email protected] R.J. Chacon and R.G. Mendoza (eds.), The Ethics of Anthropology 289 and Amerindian Research: Reporting on Environmental Degradation and Warfare, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-1065-2_12, © Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2012 290 E. Arkush particular intellectual moment we inhabit. That includes not only our moment in the history of archaeological thought, but also the history of representations of indigeneity. In this paper, I wish to stress this last factor. In the Andes, archaeologists must contend with unsavory representations of indigenous Andeans as backward, “tough,” and liable to irrational violence. These old but newly reconfi gured images are drawn on for political purposes by both criollo urbanites and “indigenous Andeans” themselves. They are counterbalanced by more positive but problematic characterizations that emphasize spirituality, reciprocity, and harmony with nature. These images too are strategically consumed and perpetrated by the crafters of nationalist narratives, the tourism and artesania industries, and self-identifi ed indigenous Andeans. Both kinds of essentialist vision imply a static continuity from pre-contact practices to present-day Andeans. From a purely academic perspective, their fl aws are obvious, but their mere existence in the public imaginary creates a politically charged and falsely polarized space for archaeological interpretation, forcing us to choose between interpretations of the past that seem either distastefully savage or falsely idyllic. As an example, my fi eld research has centered on pukaras , walled hilltop settlements in the Titicaca Basin of southern Peru (Arkush 2008, 2011 ) . Various lines of evidence indicate to me that pukaras were forts, and that they were a response to real and pervasive warfare. The design of the sites is clearly defensive; they incor- porate multiple walls and have bigger and more walls on the sides that are easiest to approach. Walls often have a parapet. In some cases, piles of river cobbles are present near the walls, presumably for use as slingstones. Less direct evidence also suggests the sites are the result of warfare. Rather than a few isolated pukaras, there is a clear regional pattern of very prevalent fortifi cation in a relatively short time frame of about 1300–1450 ad (Arkush 2008 ) . It is in fact a macro-regional pattern, for there are high rates of defensive settlement and fortifi cation from many parts of the central and southern Andes at about the same time (Arkush 2006 ; Covey 2008 ) . Strong pressures must have driven people to inhabit these hilltops. They are trouble- some to ascend, cold, windy, far from fi elds, and often, far from water sources (modern houses tend to be located at sheltered hill bases, where springs are com- mon, fi elds are productive, and roads are not too far away). That these inconvenient, isolated spots were used so intensively during the age of pukaras suggests the threat of attack was grave. Finally, in an early colonial dictionary of Aymara, the indigenous language most widely spoken in the Titicaca Basin, the word pukara is associated with war and refuge from threat (Bertonio 1986 [1612]). That is one way of viewing pukaras. But quite different perspectives are possible. At almost every talk I have given on pukaras, I have been asked whether we can say beyond the shadow of a doubt that they represent evidence for warfare. Could they instead have been symbolic statements of power and solidarity by their builders? If they were defensive in intent, did war actually happen, or just the threat of it? And in all honesty, I lack the sort of smoking-gun evidence that would clinch the case. There is no case of a Titicaca Basin pukara that was clearly attacked or sacked – not at this point (for almost no excavation has taken place). Walls at some sites are in such poor condition they appear to have been intentionally destroyed, but alternative explana- tions are certainly possible. There has been very little excavation of human remains 12 Violence, Indigeneity, and Archaeological Interpretation in the Central Andes 291 for the period, so the presence or absence of skeletal trauma does not resolve the question (though see de la Vega et al. 2005 ; Juengst and Chávez 2011 ) . Some of the walls are rather unimpressive, and they often do not encircle the whole hilltop, show- ing that the builders decided it was not worth the effort to make an impregnable bar- rier. I am reduced to cross-cultural analogy, arguing that across cultures, relatively decentralized societies such as this one that fortify their settlements engage in war frequently, about once a year or more (Solometo 2006 ) . This kind of argument is unconvincing to archaeologists who believe that the unique characteristics of the Andean area make comparisons to other world regions not very applicable or useful. From their perspective, a militaristic interpretation of pukaras ignores the specifi cs of Andean cultural practices. They might argue that pukaras had little or nothing to do with warfare (e.g., Valkenier 1995 ) . Mountains were worshipped in many parts of the Andes at contact. The Incas made sacrifi ces at high mountain shrines, and these imposing landforms almost certainly had signifi cance much earlier in time (e.g., Williams and Nash 2006 ) . Andeans in the highlands continue to consider mountains to be active agents in the production of animal and crop fertility (Bolin 1998 ; Isbell 1978 ; Rasnake 1988 ) and even in human political affairs (Gose 1994 ; Mishkin 1940 :237). From this view, pukaras might have been spiritually charged peaks where inhabitants built walls to demarcate sacred space and defi ne the social unit. If pukaras were associated with warfare at all, runs another argument, it might have been a form of ritualized combat quite foreign to the Western concept of war. “Ritual battles” or tinku have been practiced for centuries and up to the present day in several parts of the Andean highlands. Limited in scope, festive, and scheduled to the church calendar, tinku are battles fought with slingstones, whips, and fi sts between communities on otherwise fairly amicable terms, in which spilt blood and the occasional death augur a prosperous harvest (see, among others, Arkush and Stanish 2005 ; Chacon et al. 2007 ) . Though recorded tinku battles do not involve fortifi cations, perhaps (say some) pukaras provided an arena for similar ritual battles that were tightly governed by rules, and limited in their destructiveness (Topic and Topic 1999, 2009 ) . Archaeological debates such as this one are hard to resolve conclusively. On the surface, the problem is that we rarely fi nd ourselves beyond the shadow of a doubt. Archaeological evidence of violence, such as walls, burning episodes, mass graves, and skeletal trauma, is often ambiguous, and can be interpreted in multiple ways (e.g., Walker 1998 ) . But the underlying problem is that violence in the past has political repercussions in the present (see also Chap. 11 ). That affects not just our reporting of violence, but our fundamental vision of it, for even with an open-and-shut case for interpersonal violence, some ways of envisioning the violence make it seem more palatable, and some, more barbaric. This basic problem infuses not just Andean archaeology, but the anthropology of warfare in general. Take, for instance, the difference in tenor between an ethno- graphic study of “indigenous” warfare (say in highland Papua New Guinea, e.g., Meggitt 1977 ; Poposil 1994; Rappaport 1968 ; Roscoe 1996 ; Wiessner and Tumu 1998 ) and an anthropological treatment of a factional (ethnic or sectarian) war in a more militarized setting, like Chechnya (Tishkov 2004 ) or Mozambique (Nordstrom 292 E. Arkush 1997 ) or El Salvador (Dickson-Gomez 2003 ) . The fi rst, if it was written any time since the 1930s, is relatively free of moral judgment; the second is typically infused with moral outrage, deplores how war ruins lives and communities, and condemns those responsible.

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