The Past Ahead Language, Culture, and Identity in the Neotropics Edited by Christian Isendahl Department of Archaeology and Ancient History Uppsala University 2012 Abstract The Past Ahead. Language, Culture, and Identity in the Neotropics. (Edited by: Christian Isendahl.) Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Studies in Global Archaeology 18. 260 pp. Uppsala 2012. ISBN 978-91-506-2289-8. In Andean cognition the embodiment of the past is different from many other ways to spatially relate the position of the body to time. This epistemology is for instance expressed in the Quechua word ñawpa, which signifies that the past is “in front of us;” it is known and can be seen. Seeing and knowing the past in this way reverberates within the historical ecological argument that the present is contingent with the past and is explicitly reflected within the contributions to this volume. “The Past Ahead: Language, Culture, and Identity in the Neotropics” forms a collection of reworked papers originally presented in shorter format by archaeologists, anthropologists, and linguists at the research symposium “Archaeology and Society in Bolivia” organized at Uppsala University by the editor. The volume includes chapters by Jan-Åke Alvarsson, Lisbet Bengtsson, Roger Blench, Sergio Calla, Christian Isendahl, Carla Jaimes, John Janusek, Adriana Muñoz, Heiko Prümers, Walter Sánchez, Per Stenborg, Juan Marcelo Ticona, and Charlotta Widmark examining a series of different aspects of agriculture, complex societies, identities, landscape, languages, and urbanism in the highland and lowland Neotropics that all highlight the significance of the past in the present. ISSN 1651-1255 ISBN 978-91-506-2289-8 © The Authors Layout and typesetting: Göran Wallby, Uppsala University Library Printed in Sweden by Edita Västra Aros, Västerås 2012 Contents Introducing the Past Ahead ............................................................................................... ̶ Christian Isendahl The Role of Agriculture in Explaining the Diversity of Amerindian Languages ............................................................................. ̰̲ Roger Blench Undercover: Mimicry and Clandestine Identities of the Past ................................................................................. ̸̲ Per Stenborg Why Go Back to the Old Ways? Bilingual Education and Ethnoregenesis among the ‘Weenhayek of the Bolivian Gran Chaco ............................................ ̴̸ Jan-Åke Alvarsson Urban Aymara Speakers in Bolivia and the Processes of Culture and Identity Formation .............................................................................. ̶̸ Charlotta Widmark Bolivians in Gothenburg: The Archaeological and Ethnographic Collections at the Museum of World Culture ................................................................................. ̸̲ Adriana Muñoz Understanding Tiwanaku Origins: Animistic Ecology in the Andean Altiplano ............................................................ ̰̰̰ John W. Janusek El Proyecto Lomas de Casarabe: Investigaciones arqueológicas en los Llanos de Mojos, Bolivia ................................................................................... ̸̰̲ Heiko Prümers La cerámica de dos montículos habitacionales en el área de Casarabe, Llanos de Moxos ................................................................. ̵̰̰ Carla Jaimes Betancourt The Whispering Winds: The Sacredness of Walking in the Andean World ...................................................................................................... ̷̴̰ Lisbet Bengtsson Cruzando paisajes, transitando caminos: El ramal Inca de Sipe Sipe hasta Inkachaca (Cochabamba, Bolivia) ......................................... ̶̱̯ Walter Sánchez Canedo Cultivating the Yungas: Notes on Current Farming at Rasupampa and Tablas Monte ................................................................................ ̸̱̱ Christian Isendahl, Juan Marcelo Ticona, and Sergio Calla Maldonado Cultivating the Yungas: Notes on Current Farming at Rasupampa and Tablas Monte Christian Isendahl,* Juan Marcelo Ticona, and Sergio Calla Maldonado Contact details (*) Department of Archaeology and Ancient History Uppsala University Box 626 SE-751 26 Uppsala Sweden [email protected] RESUMEN Cultivando los Yungas: Notas brevas sobre la agricultura contemporánea en Rasupampa y Tablas Monte En la corriente dominante de economía del desarrollo agrícola los términos agricultura “pre-industrial,” “indígena” y “tradicional” a menudo se utilizan como sinónimos inter- cambiables para los sistemas agrarios considerados como algo estático. Sin embargo, la creciente evidencia de la investigación arqueológica a escala global presenta un panorama radicalmente diferente; éstas descripciones de los sistemas de producción de alimentos en el pasado sugieren una diversidad espacial y una variación temporal. Un ejemplo de ello es el paisaje agro-arqueológico que recientemente ha sido descubierto en Rasupampa, en la región de los Yungas del Departamento de Cochabamba, Bolivia. Inicialmente in- vestigado, descrito y documentado por Walter Sánchez (2008), estos restos incluyen una variedad con respecto a tenencia de la tierra, control de la erosión de la capa superior del suelo y soluciones de gestión del agua que no han sido reportados en una configuración similar en otras partes de los Andes. Las investigaciones en curso exploran diferentes aspectos de este agro-sistema y la ecología histórica de los Yungas. Una parte importante de esta investigación es conocer las actuales prácticas agrícolas y sistemas agronómicos de conocimiento locales. Este trabajo resume las prácticas actuales de agricultores en Rasu- pampa y las regiones circundantes, a partir de una serie de entrevistas con los agricultores de la población de Tablas Monte. 229 Introduction In mainstream agricultural development economics “pre-industrial,” “indige- nous,” and “traditional” agriculture in the lower latitudes are often used as loosely interchangeable synonyms for farming technologies and resource management systems that are regarded as static and conservative, that resist change and in- novation. They are commonly associated with agriculture with poor efficiency (therefore requiring vast land reserves to maintain production levels inter-an- nually) that produces mainly for household auto-consumption, with some low- level barter exchange of marginal surpluses. They are seen as essentially isolated farming traditions that respond only to local sustenance demands, disconnected from larger-scale economic, social, political, and environmental systems and pro- cesses. Indeed, if the current unprecedented boost in agricultural innovation and change driven by a short-term low-cost fossil-fuel energy regime is used as meas- ure, then earlier agricultural innovations and the pace of technological change certainly fade in comparison.1 But succumbing to shallow recentism in evaluating the short- and long-term outcomes of agricultural resource management as we enter the post peak-oil era must surely be to ignore valuable human experience of securing food provisioning systems? The historical ecological arguments (e.g., Balée 2006; Isendahl 2010) that the present is contingent with the past and that current farming relates to pre-industrial agricultural economics, technologies, and management strategies in a formalist rather than substantivist manner—i.e., that these differ in degree rather than kind—suggests that agro-archaeology (or the archaeology of agriculture) can generate insights on the short-term efficacy of land-use decision-making and their long-term impacts that in some sense are use- ful for current and future management of agricultural resources and food security. Indeed, mounting evidence from archaeological research at the global scale paints a radically different picture of pre-industrial agriculture; these are descrip- tions of past food production systems that contrary to uniformity and stagnancy suggest spatial and temporal diversity and variation. The archaeological evidence for prehistoric farming in the central Andean region of Peru and Bolivia is among the most extensive and diverse records of landesque capital investment for inten- sified agricultural production anywhere in the world (e.g., Donkin 1979; Dene- van 2001). A multitude of different resource management strategies designed in particular to address issues of slope, deficient or excessive water availability, and low temperatures were developed and included a series of terracing, irrigation, 1 When the starting date of this sweep in agricultural innovation should best be placed may be a matter of discussion, but the introduction of superphosphates and nitrogen in Europe and North America at the end of the 19th century forms landmark innovations. In the 1960s and 1970s, the implementation of the so-called “Green Revolution”—a global-scale agro-technological reform at- tempt aiming to transform agrarian production towards monocultures of standardized cash crops with high inputs of fossil fuels throughout the agricultural production and distribution process, agro-technological machinery, chemical pesticides, fertilizers, etc.—massively exported industria- lized farming at the global scale. More recently, the boom in genetically modified food plants has brought plant domestication, modification, and production under new levels of high-technological control. 230 Figure 1. The location of Rasupampa in Bolivia. – La ubicación de Rasupampa en Bolivia. and drainage