Violence, indigeneity, and archaeological interpretation in the central andes
pp. 289-309
in: Richard J. Chacon, Rúben G. Mendoza (eds), The ethics of anthropology and Amerindian research, Berlin, Springer, 2012Abstract
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 reconfigured 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-identified indigenous Andeans. In the oversimplified 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.