EUROPEAN CONQUEST AND AFTERMATH;
HISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY; HERITAGE MANAGEMENT,
ARCHAEOLOGY AND SOCIETY
Lesson objectives: Demonstrate knowledge of the history of the conquest and its results, historic archaeology and heritage management, relationship of archaeology to contemporary national identities.
Discuss the interactions and intercontinental movements before the conquest. A part of archaeology that resides at the intersection of public awareness and research concerns deals with interpretations of the past seen in the intellectual context of their times. All science is a product of its time and place and cultural context. So in discussing late 18 th -19 th - century diffusion theories Bruhns (chapter 18) notes we are really discussing the sophistication of native cultures in our own terms. Popular ideas in the non-technical as well as professional academic literature often sought to establish the superiority of the invading culture, no matter what the time period. If the native culture is superior to the one it is invading, then the invasion is justified, as well as the enslavement and continual oppression of the people, whether by Inca, Spaniard, or whoever. This endemic racism still pervades South America in many places today, because the intrusive Europeans established themselves at the top of the political and social hierarchies and the Indians at the bottom. We can see this even in diffusionary ideas about how people from across the ocean (or another galaxy) had to show up to teach the inferior Indians how to do something, whether making pottery, boats, building pyramids, or whatever other complex technology is chosen. No anthropology student should ever use the terms "advanced" or "primitive" to characterize any cultural group. Westerners are so obsessed with technology that this is the only way we have to judge people, but using technology as a basis for evaluation is biased in 2 different ways. First, ancient technologies were often far more complex than we realize, even if they do not seem so because they are made of simpler materials. Second, if we picked other criteria ø art, music, architecture, literature ø would we in the U.S. be considered "advanced" in comparison with other cultures of the world, South America included?
As for the hyper-diffusionary interpretations seeing transoceanic contact, if it were real, there would be evidence not just of similarities in this artifact or that, but in whole systems, whole complexes of related practices. Yet some still argue for this, more for professional pride perhaps. There is better evidence for north-south contact, between Chavin and Olmec, and through the ethnocentrically termed "intermediate" area of Colombia and Ecuador. Plants such as maize and manioc moved north and south. Goods were moved along coastlines in boats on economic voyages. Most of the prehistoric economic interaction networks crashed after the invasion by Old World people who used some of the same ethnocentric arguments to justify the centuries of violence and oppression that followed.
Briefly recount the history of the conquest. The Spanish and others had made it to the Caribbean by the end of the 15 th century and with the Portuguese, divided up various new lands. Europeans invaded both North and South America in rapid sequential expeditions. The Spanish were in Mexico and Florida by the early 1500s. Portuguese explorers made it to Brazil by 1500 and discovered beautiful naked nice people, they said. Balboa made it to the Rio de la Plata by 1513, and after that, an early colony at Buenos Aires spread the first epidemics that spread to the western continent. Pizarro came from Panama to the north coast of Peru by 1527 and got to Cuzco on another expedition by 1533. He saw the gold, silver, fine cloth, and wanted it all. There may have been a continental population of many millions or tens of millions. That rapidly changed as they mostly died off from the intruders' diseases and weapons. The Europeans had no problem in subjecting all the native peoples, since they were barbarians. They had seen the Aztecs doing human sacrifices, and here the Inca were too! (Good mainstream movies to see on this, available at your video store, are The Mission and Cabeza de Vaca.)
When we left off, the last prehistoric emperor, Wayna Capac, and his new heir, had both just died in Ecuador from epidemic disease. Two of his sons had the best claims to his position: Huascar and Atahuallpa (Atawallpa). Of course these two fought each other in civil war, and Atahuallpa won, only to be conquered by the Spanish in 1532, who moved into Cajamarca with 168 men, 6 horses, and a few cannon. Atahuallpa had 30,000 troops but fell to trickery. He was taken prisoner and required to give up a fabulous ransom collected by stripping sites across Peru of their valuable artifacts and melting down the gold (13,000 pounds) and silver (25,000 pounds). The Spanish killed him anyway after they got the goods. Nine years later, Pizarro, not the nicest of men, was himself assassinated. We will not recount the complete history here because this is archaeology class. But interesting archaeology goes on, including the search for Vilcabamba, a secret city, where the Inca were supposed to have hidden from the Spanish for years after the conquest. Hiram Bingham thought when he got to Machu Picchu that it was Vilcabamba, but it was not, though it has produced some horse remains, which had to have come from the Spanish, and a few other Spanish-made artifacts. These indicate that perhaps some Inca stayed there for a short time after the conquest (Bordewich 2003:114).
But the battles between Inca heirs and between native and Old-World invader left areas that did not recover until very recently, if at all. Pizarro took Cuzco in 1533 and set up a Spanish capital at Lima and a new emperor named Manco, who rebelled against the Spanish until his death in 1545. Various emperors were put forth, and the Spaniards fought against each other in their greed for gold and power. The last Inca to inherit the title of emperor was Tupac Amaru, who held a court in the inaccessible mountains northeast of Cuzco. He harassed the Spanish colonial governors as much as possible before he was captured and executed in 1571. The Spanish were rapidly trying to Christianize the Indians as well. But the smallpox, measles, mumps, typhus, tuberculosis, and flu infecting virgin populations of the New World resulted in native death rates of up to 95%. Survivors were needed for working on the plantations and in the mines, though they occasionally had various uprisings that were crushed. Liberation from colonial rule did not come for most of the continent until the 19 th century.
The colonial gold and silver from Mexico and Cuzco flooded Spain and caused massive inflation that spread to the rest of Europe. The American treasure gave rise to the capitalism of the Medicis and others, as well as to the interest in the natural history of exotic places. New World crops such as maize, manioc, chili peppers, tomatoes, potatoes, squash, and peanuts, as well as turkeys (but why not guinea pigs?!) quickly made it into world cuisines. Other plants provided desirable drugs, from tobacco to coca to cinchona for tropical medicine. The great "Columbian exchange" went both ways. Wheat, olives, cattle, pigs, all the important Old World domesticates were brought to the Americas. Columbus brought sugar cane to the Caribbean, by which time the natives had already been made extinct by his conquistadores, so it was important to bring African slaves to work plantations. In 1537 the pope said the Indians were indeed true humans with souls, so missionaries also poured in, as well as the great Inquisition.
Archaeology of the contact period and subsequent colonial era is beginning to blossom in recent years (e.g., Spalding 1999, Monteiro 1999). Previously it was thought not to be as important as understanding the glorious prehistoric civilizations, but now we are also interested in the material evidence of all the different kinds of interactions among indigenous peoples and the invaders and colonizers, and the subsequent history of them all. Using a combination of the historic documents and the archaeological record, researchers are examining the European background of the conquerors as well as the conquered. And of course from the beginning there were also Africans, whether brought as slaves or free conquistadores themselves. The Spanish set up the encomienda system, portioning out lands and accompanying Indians to work them, working through local kurakas (though they took pains to eliminate any female kurakas and change many other aspects of native society, but especially gender relations). Historical archaeology of the early colonial period seeks to examine interactions among all these indigenous and introduced peoples, not only elite lifestyles, politics, and socioeconomic systems, but also how the material culture shows the relationships among them all and the course of culture change.
In every South American country historical archaeology is just beginning to be appreciated and new sites investigated, from elite colonial establishments to settlements of maroons, escaped slaves or free blacks. A notable project in northeastern Brazil's Palmares region, for example, is examining a state founded in the 17 th century by quilombos, runaway slaves resisting the colonial regime, and tying this past to modern social identities (e.g., Anderson 1995). Many thoughtful studies use South American historical archaeology to demonstrate how the dominant society exercised control over lives of everyday people during the historic development of today's capitalist states (Gomez Romero 2002, Funari and Zarankin 2002, Therrien 2003). Several good examples in the September 2003 issue of the SAA's bulletin, the Archaeological Record , tie in historical archaeology with postprocessual thought and cultural heritage management (Funari 2003), including at a site of former missionized Guarani Indians in Uruguay (Curbelo 2003) and at a more recent and tragic site involved in the torture of political victims by the Argentinian military dictatorship of the 1970s-early 80s (Weissel 2003). Not as widely known as the work of forensic biological anthropologists is that of forensic archaeologists in recovering remains of the "desaparecidos" or disappeared ones and other victims of repressive political regimes in many parts of the continent. Yes, the bones can sometimes be identified with specific victims, but often the accompanying artifacts and careful excavation methods are crucial in identifying individuals and interpreting the nature of the crimes. This is really applied anthropology and the use of archaeology for modern political advocacy.
Tied in with cultural heritage management and urban archaeology, as well as salvage and rescue of sites, are various programs in different South American countries to bring public awareness to local residents, schoolchildren, and the public in general. Many are developing website and so can be internationally accessed. An example is the program Historian Baja Las Bulldozes, history under the pavement, sponsored by the Commission of Historical and Cultural Heritage Preservation of the city of Buenos Aires, in which citizens are learning of their own local identity and historic background (at http://www.buenosaires.gov.ar/areas/cultura/bajolasbaldosas/contenidos/; I thank Marcelo Weissel for this information). Web searches will turn up many such national and local programs, but most do not have English versions.
The European vision of America for centuries was obsessed with what was seen in the eastern lowlands, forest people of the Caribbean and Amazon who were cannibals. Early portrayals show naked Indians with tattoos and upright feather headdresses shown around cooking fires above which are pots full of human arms and legs. These images were reproduced so many times that it took centuries to dispel the stereotype (look at the earliest U.S. cigar-store wooden Indians; they have upright feather headdresses, not the Plains-type war bonnet of later ones). Such heathen behavior was a great excuse to exterminate these peoples, and in Brazil there were licences to hunt Indians even into the 20 th century. But many chiefdoms survived up till European contact and colonization (Villamarín and Villamarín 1999, Gibbons 1990), only to be rapidly decimated by disease, slave raids, and other abuses. Because historic Amazonian foragers and horticulturalists, from the 17 th century up through today, do not resemble complex chiefdoms, it is harder to persuade some archaeologists that such complexity ever existed there, as we have already noted. But recent work is finding more and more evidence of moundbuilding and other indications. Plus, careful reading of the early accounts shows that the first Europeans in the 1540s moving up the Amazon saw large gleaming white cities with tens of thousands of people ruled by warrior chiefs.
Ethnographic work today by archaeologists and other anthropologists is discovering ancient traditions that are maintained in some form by modern indigenous peoples, of great use in interpreting the past. There are some 8 million Quechua people today and something under a million Aymara, as well as many other indigenous groups who have survived and continued. In the Andes, Euro-Americans still do not do as well as natives, and the government does not understand the verticality issues well enough to realize some sources of unrest. In Peru some 35%-85% more land was farmed prehistorically than in recent times, and Western-type dams and water management systems do not work because the Andes are young mountains still moving.
We have already discussed Bolivian farming methods in both the raised field areas and the high terrace and irrigation zones. Insights into that old-time religion are gained from Indians who celebrate festivals for mountain deities and combine ancient rituals with aspects of Christianity. One article on this in Peru shows a picture of a contest between condor and a bull to which it is tethered, showing the symbolism of the native mountain deity and the Spaniard, and everyone, even the condor, drinks chicha (Reinhard 1992). It is important to remember, however, that there have been centuries of acculturation to European and other new ways, and ethnographic analogy for archaeological interpretation may be helpful, but must be understood to have this kind of bias. This is especially true for Amazonian natives, who are constantly in the news and natural history publications because of the depletion of their rainforest habitat. The Kayapo Indians have been joined by rock star Sting in their quest for control of their lands and forests, and many other groups make the news as their political awareness increases. As we noted already, however, tropical forest Indians of today or even the last few centuries are enormously changed from the late prehistoric complex chiefdoms that once existed there. But some interesting work by scholars trying to save dying languages (mostly Tupian) of the many different groups can be used to help trace their prehistoric locations, movements, and adaptations (Hinchberger 2002).
Land and water management systems done by local communities often are maintained from what must be prehistoric times. In the Bolivian Amazon, Erickson (2000, Mann 2000) has documented zig-zag earthworks that from archaeological and ethnographic evidence appear to be fish weirs and artificial ponds. Besides capturing water for raising fish in them, such structures would have worked for growing aquatic snails and a palm important for fruits, edible beetles, and fiber. Radiocarbon dates from the 16 th -17 th centuries suggest people continued what was a more ancient tradition of landscape manipulation and intensification of aquaculture and agriculture long after the time of European contact and colonization. The Spanish did not control this area until the early 1700s. In the middle Amazon where agricultural intensification produced terra preta sites, today these are seen as very fertile, unlike rainforest soils after deforestation; reproduction of such soils is now being attempted for the practical reason of increasing production and achieving sustainable use of these forest areas (Mann 2002, Neves 1999). Thus so many important lessons from archaeology are possible, and applied anthropology becomes important for modern farmers working for sustainable use of the tropics (as opposed to the vastly destructive cattle ranching and logging). It is speculated that millennia of human manipulation in the ways of prehistoric peoples (unlike deforestation today) may have actually contributed to rainforest ecological diversity instead of curtailing it.
In discussing public archaeology today in South America there are many topics to explore. The first is the most immediate: looting continues at such an accelerated pace that often researchers must stop digging or doing lab work or analyses and become activists in international agreements, law enforcement systems in the different countries, U.S. and European customs systems (through which most of the looted antiquities pass, somehow), and international heritage management. It is exactly comparable to the drug trade, where the demand in rich countries fuels the activity of huaqueros in poor countries. How can the anthropologist condemn subsistence looting when it is the only way to make a living for a poor farmer or herder? The best solution is of course education, public programs and, yes, public money to hire the looters to guard what is their own heritage, convert them and help them understand the value beyond monetary compensation. There are great examples of converting looters to helpers, as we discussed at the beginning of the class (and also see Lerche 2000 on Chachapoyas looters)
Another crucial area in heritage management is salvage of sites and remains in the path of construction, rescue archaeology (which we also discussed at the beginning of class a little bit). A recent article (Cock 2002) on the expansion of the city of Lima, Peru, shows how current needs take precedence over saving the past. Squatters fleeing the big city set up a shanty town that resulted in decay of underlying Inca and pre-Inca burials, and they even burned the mummy bundles hoping to avoid excavation that would delay town development and improvement of their lousy living conditions. Hiring locals to dig, the archaeologists gained their trust and helped them in the quest for government services and title to the land they were squatting on. Meanwhile the finds included a remarkable mummy bundle of a man and child packed in 300 pounds of raw cotton fibers.
We have already mentioned the lack of legislation protecting ancient mummies and graves in most of South America. Do you think some laws are needed? Would they prevent scientific study? It is true that looters are mostly after goods they can sell to make money, and often leave the human remains thrown out. The National Geographic article about the Atacama desert shows a looted historic cemetery where even the dried bodies of Chilean miners still wearing their boots are exposed to the sun and shriveling after whatever goods in their graves have been stolen (Vesilind 2003:71). There is a small but real movement in indigenous South America to identify with these physical remains of the ancients and take control of them, or at least have a say in how they are treated. It is certainly a major part of archaeological ethics everywhere in the 21 st century not only to respect descendent peoples and have dialog between them and the archaeologists, but also to allow them to decide on disposition of the remains. Many archaeologists have not yet realized that, however (Politis 2001)
The ethical issue of human remains is only one among many in studying modern scientific archaeological practice in South America. There is increasing recognition that our interpretations and managements and uses of the past have until recently been dominated by foreign archaeologists, especially North Americans and Europeans, and this especially continues for English-speaking audiences. The imperialist, colonial, capitalist viewpoints of the traditional interpretations may be very inaccurate for describing ancient societies organized along very different lines from those of Western culture. But foreign archaeologists have often had the money, the backing, the influence to control the research, at times not even allowing those with differing opinions to publish or even work in some areas. They have come in to dig and left with the goods and the information, relating with local archaeologists at times only peripherally or not at all. This is changing as South Americans are pointing out (usually more graciously than is warranted!) some of the problems and mistakes, and the arrogance of foreigners who do not know the landscape or data well enough, as well as the rush of South Americans to identify with foreign work instead of their own interpretations and their own cultural heritage (Politis 2001, many of the papers in Politis and Alberti 1999, Funari 1998). An important use and benefit of archaeology today in South America is ideological: it helps to forge modern identity and help people recover the history removed by colonial domination. In countries where political repression and military rule have stifled expression, native archaeologists have not found it easy to accomplish their work, especially if their findings contradict traditional views. North American archaeologists, more than any others, are not used to the more socially aware and outright socialist philosophies that might be prevalent in South American intellectual environments. It is producing what is called social archaeology, with all the awareness that such a name entails (e.g., Vargas and Sanoja 1999)
Public archaeology also means seeing how archaeological interpretations are influenced by the intellectual and socioeconomic climate of the times, the political situations in different countries, and other factors. Archaeo-tourism (often as part of eco-tourism) is becoming a big issue; it brings in outsiders as a way to obtain revenue. The legacy of the past can be used cooperatively with this or in competition, as a source of national or local identity opposed to outsiders or to national political agendas, as well as furthering national political and economic goals. We saw the Aymara natives trying to take back Tiwanaku in Bolivia, or at least profit from it and use it as a symbol of their struggle. But often access to sites means their disturbance, damage, and destruction. We saw the aerial photos of the Nazca lines with dirt bike and 4-wheel drive vehicle tracks across them.
Machu Picchu, 310 miles southeast of Lima, Peru's capital, attracts 300,000 foreign visitors a year. It is an incredibly stunning site (an acrophobic's nightmare, perched so high up and requiring train and bus travel along treacherous routes full of switchbacks). The term Machu Picchu means old mountain in Quechua. The site was "discovered" in 1911 by dashing Yale professor Hiram Bingham (one of the models for Indiana Jones), though of course the local folks always knew it was there. It is now a familiar destination for tourists, and the famous image of the stone buildings with the even higher peaks looming in the background and cloudy mists enveloping the scene can be found in many areas of popular culture. A new exhibit at Yale this year (and touring the country through 2003-04) organized by archaeologists Richard Burger and Lucy Salazar (spouses) will feature items from this site and explain how it was not necessarily a holy place but apparently a royal retreat full of support staff and used for only 80 years until it got too expensive. John Rowe (once a professor to Burger and Salazar) had found in the Spanish archives a 16 th - century lawsuit filed by descendants of Pachacuti seeking the return of royal family lands, including a retreat called Picchu (Kluger 2003). Meanwhile local villagers still leave at the site offerings of coca leaves, cookies, cigarettes, liquor, and prayers to the gods of the mountains (Bordewich 2003). There is identification with a glorious past thought to have been better than the Peru of today with all its problems (in 2000 its Japanese president fled the country after accusations of corruption; the new president is on shaky ground).
Each country's heritage is different (we have not even discussed the French, British, Dutch colonial presence on the northeast coast of the continent). On the east coast, especially Brazil (as noted in Module 1), there is debate over especially standing historic structures, and more desire to save the ones associated with white elites than with the African-Brazilian past (Funari 1998).
The marketing of archaeology in order to save it is stirring up great debate. There is more than just native identification with the glorious past, more than just wealthy elites of Western culture paying millions for individual looted artifacts. Mainstream society is buying into it, especially if there is money to be made. Some mailing list got me a catalog this year from a place called Peruvian Connection (www.peruvianconnection.com), selling a dramatic holiday dress with ancient Nazca lines patterned in red on black and other such (very lovely but expensive) clothing; other places sell museum-quality reproductions of artifacts, jewelry patterned after ancient designs, and so on. While it is certainly better to encourage people to buy reproductions than real looted artifacts, does it fuel the market for antiquities? Or perhaps it may serve to enhance the appreciation of the ancient past of South America, which is after all far less known by the Western world than that of, say Mexico.
Finally, just a note about popular culture and hollywoodization. Yes, the opening scene of Indiana Jones movie shows him apparently in Peru running through the jungle to grab the golden idol from the cave. Not only is the idol rather Aztec-looking in design, not only was the scene filmed in Hawaii according to the credits, but also, and far worse, the portrayal of how South American archaeology is done suggests looting, treasure hunting, and everything archaeology is not supposed to be. The stereotypes of archaeology are legion, of course (and can you say that female archaeologists such as I look/act like Laura Croft, tomb-raider?!). Possibly even more dangerous is the recent portrayal in the Disney animated film Emperor's New Groove of past natives, never named but clearly Inca in Peru. They of course talk like modern American teens, with similar values, and the film is full of historical errors (probably why the people are not named). Helaine Silverman (2002b) has noted how this unacknowledged cultural plundering in the name of artistic license is very disturbing in exoticizing past peoples and pretending to portray their lives as not so different from ours. This is not the first such portrayal in popular culture of course. But perhaps this course in the archaeology of the whole continent has been able to demonstrate the enormous variability of indigenous and historic cultures in space and time, how many of their problems and lifeways may have been like ours, but how many more were enormously different, calling forth diverse responses and human systems that may have scholarly and practical value to examine today.