Pastoralism and the Non-Pastoral World in the Late Pre-Columbian History of the Southern Andes (1000-1535)

Abstract

Based on archaeological data, we discuss the various ways in which herding and herders articulated with other activities and actors in the South Andes during the last few centuries before the Spanish conquest of America. This relationship took different forms, including pastoral specialization and inter-ethnic trade, political/ethnic integration and redistribution, and economic diversification at a household level. This variability cannot be entirely accounted by environmental diversity, but was also a consequence of changing historical conditions, such as those related to endemic warfare during the fourteenth century or the integration of the area into the Inka state. In each of these scenarios, pastoralists found different ways of integrating with the non-pastoral world, both in practice and representation.

Political mosaics and networks: Tiwanaku expansion into the upper Desaguadero Valley, Bolivia

“…Circuits take form based in relationships established between drovers and sedentary communities, often to the extent that they become codified through the establishment of real or fictive kin relationships. The fundamental mobility of caravans coupled with the importance of social relationships between caravan drovers and axis settlements created a situation in which Formative Period centres most likely had a good deal of control over caravan routes and it was probably difficult for Tiwanaku to break into these social networks (Berenguer 2004;Llagostera 1996;Nielsen 2001Nielsen , 2009Nielsen , 2013. The political agencies of local communities participating in caravan circuits were likely to have significantly shaped the contours of Tiwanaku political influence and expansion (Nielsen 2013, 413).…”

The political ecology of late South American pastoralism: an Andean perspective A.D. 1,000-1,615

“…Permanent human settlements coalesce at a select number of prime locations, often separated from other such sites by mountains, saltpans and deserts. These conditions ensure a low population density and aggregation, while encouraging population mobility allied to pastoralism and interregional relationships (Nielsen 2009). Antofagasta de la Sierra is part of the salt or Southern puna (drier than the northern puna of Argentina), and it is characterized by its extreme aridity with annual summer rainfall of ≤150 mm, including virtually no rain in some years.…”

Discontinuities in quinoa biodiversity in the dry Andes: an 18-century perspective based on allelic genotyping

“…Another likely cause of the changes in quinoa demographic history relates to evidence of a generalized warfare in the dry Andes in the 750-600 BP period (11,39,40), a situation exacerbated 232 by the competition for scarce water resources (11,40), likely disturbing local seed-supply networks.…”

“…We used the maximum likelihood estimation with a precision of 0.00001, a maximum number of generations of selfing set to 10 and 100000 iterations. In some populations, the 750 high degree of homozygosity (#1,3,6) or the low sample size (samples #10, 11,16,19) prevented the estimation of s(LnL). Results of allelic diversity, heterozygosity and selfing rates in the 19 studied 752 quinoa samples are shown in Table SI…”