The South American Camelids
The South American Camelids

Author: Duccio Bonavia

Publisher: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology Press

Published: 2009-02-01

Total Pages: 657

ISBN-13: 1938770846

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One of the most significant differences between the New World's major areas of high culture is that Mesoamerica had no beasts of burden and wool, while the Andes had both. Four members of the camelid family--wild guanacos and vicunas, and domestic llamas and alpacas--were native to the Andes. South American peoples relied on these animals for meat and wool, and as beasts of burden to transport goods all over the Andes. In this book, Duccio Bonavia tackles major questions about these camelids, from their domestication to their distribution at the time of the Spanish conquest. One of Bonavia's hypotheses is that the arrival of the Europeans and their introduced Old World animals forced the Andean camelids away from the Pacific coast, creating the (mistaken) impression that camelids were exclusively high-altitude animals. Bonavia also addresses the diseases of camelids and their population density, suggesting that the original camelid populations suffered from a different type of mange than that introduced by the Europeans. This new mange, he believes, was one of the causes behind the great morbidity of camelids in Colonial times. In terms of domestication, while Bonavia believes that the major centers must have been the puna zone intermediate zones, he adds that the process should not be seen as restricted to a single environmental zone. Bonavia's landmark study of the South American camelids is now available for the first time in English. This new edition features an updated analysis and comprehensive bibliography. In the Spanish edition of this book, Bonavia lamented the fact that the zooarchaeological data from R. S. MacNeish's Ayacucho Project had yet to be published. In response, the Ayacucho's Project's faunal analysts, Elizabeth S. Wing and Kent V. Flannery, have added appendices on the Ayacucho results to this English edition. This book will be of broad interest to archaeologists, zoologists, social anthropologists, ethnohistorians, and a wide range of students.

Catalog
Catalog

Author: University of Texas. Library. Latin American Collection

Publisher:

Published: 1969

Total Pages: 700

ISBN-13:

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The Development of the Inca State
The Development of the Inca State

Author: Brian S. Bauer

Publisher: University of Texas Press

Published: 2014-04-15

Total Pages: 204

ISBN-13: 0292717725

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The Inca empire was the largest state in the Americas at the time of the Spanish invasion in 1532. From its political center in the Cuzco Valley, it controlled much of the area included in the modern nations of Ecuador, Peru, Chile, and Bolivia. But how the Inca state became a major pan-Andean power is less certain. In this innovative work, Brian S. Bauer challenges traditional views of Inca state development and offers a new interpretation supported by archaeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence. Spanish chroniclers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries attributed the rapid rise of Inca power to a decisive military victory over the Chanca, their traditional rivals, by Pachacuti Inca Yupanqui. By contrast, Bauer questions the usefulness of literal interpretations of the Spanish chronicles and provides instead a regional perspective on the question of state development. He suggests that incipient state growth in the Cuzco region was marked by the gradual consolidation and centralization of political authority in Cuzco, rather than resulting from a single military victory. Synthesizing regional surveys with excavation, historic, and ethnographic data, and investigating broad categories of social and economic organization, he shifts the focus away from legendary accounts and analyzes more general processes of political, economic, and social change.

Handbook of Latin American Studies
Handbook of Latin American Studies

Author:

Publisher:

Published: 1971

Total Pages: 560

ISBN-13:

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Contains records describing books, book chapters, articles, and conference papers published in the field of Latin American studies. Coverage includes relevant books as well as over 800 social science and 550 humanities journals and volumes of conference proceedings. Most records include abstracts with evaluations.

History of the Inca Realm
History of the Inca Realm

Author: Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 274

ISBN-13: 9780521637596

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History of the Inca Realm, by Maria Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, is a classic work of ethnohistorical research which has been both influential and provocative in the field of Andean prehistory. Rostworowski uses a great variety of published and unpublished documents and secondary works by Latin American, North American, and European scholars in fields including history, ethnology, archaeology, and ecology, to examine topics such as the mythical origins of the Incas, the expansion of the Inca state, the organization of Inca society, including the political role of women, the vast trading networks of the coastal merchants, and the causes of the disintegration of the Inca state in the face of a small force of Spaniards. At each step, Dr Rostworowski presents her own views, clearly and forcefully, along with those of other scholars, providing her readers with varied evidence from which to draw their own conclusions.

Tropical Montane Cloud Forests
Tropical Montane Cloud Forests

Author: Lawrence S. Hamilton

Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media

Published: 2012-12-06

Total Pages: 425

ISBN-13: 1461225000

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Until relatively recently the valuable tropical montane cloud forests (hereaf ter usually referred to as TMCFs) of the world had scarcely come under the assaults experienced by the downslope montane and lowland forests. TMCFs are not hospitable environments for human occupation, and their remoteness (except in places near Andean high mountain settlements and in the Ethiopian Highlands) and difficult terrain have given them de facto protection. The ad jacent upper montane rain forests have indeed been under assault for timber, fuelwood, and for conversion to grazing and agriculture for many decades, even centuries in the Andes, but true cloud forest has only come under ex ploitation as these lower elevational resources have disappeared. They have also been "nibbled" at from above where there have been alpine grasslands under grazing pressure. Increasingly now, however, these cloud forest eco systems are being fragmented, reduced, and disturbed at an alarming rate. It is now becoming recognized that steps must be taken rapidly to increase our understanding of TMCF and to achieve their conservation, because: their water-capture function is extremely important to society; • their species endemism is high; they serve as refugia for endangered species being marginalized in these environments by increasingly transformed lower elevation ecosystems; they are relatively little studied; yet, their value to science is extremely high; they have low resilience to disturbance; vii viii Preface and many other reasons, which will be discussed subsequently in this publi cation.