if

f
i
I
328 ALLEN

Salomon, Frank.1995. "'The Beautiful Grandparents': Andean Ancestor Shrines

and Mortuary Ritual as Seen Through Colonial Records." In Tombs for the
Living: Andean Mortuary Practices, edited by T.Dillehay, 315-54, Washington,
DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library.
---. 1998. "How the Huacas Were: The Language of Substance and Trans­
formation in the Huarochirf Quechua Manuscript (1608)." Res: Anthropology CHAPTER NINE
and Aesthetics 33:7-17.
Santa Cruz Pachakuti Yamqui Salcamaygua, Joan de. (1613) 1993. Relacion de
Antiguedades deste Reyno del Pini, edited by Pierre Duviols & Cesar Itier.
Cuzco: Centro Bartolome de Las Casas
Sillar, Bill.2004."Acts of God and Active Material Culture: Agency and Commit­
Turbulent Tombs
ment in the Andes." In Agency Uncovered: Archaeological Perspectives on Social
Agency, Power, and Being Human, edited by A. Gardner, 153-89. London: FRANK SALOMON
UCL Press.
Silverman, Gail.1994. El tejido andino: Un libro de sabiduria. Lima: Banco Cen­
tral del Peru.
Trawick, Paul B. 2002. "Tragedy and Comedy in the Andean Commons." Journal
of Political Ecology 9:35-68.
Treacy, John M.1994.Las chacras de Coporaque: Andeneria y riego en el Valle del Toward 1891, the Italian ornithologist and ethnological collector Henry
Colca. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos. Hillyer Giglioli (I 843-1909; The Geographical Journal 191 0) was invited
Urton, Gary.1981.At the Crossroads of the Earth and the Sliy: An Andean Cosmol­ to view some objects his friend Ernesto Mazzei had obtained from pre­
ogy. Austin: University of Texas Press. Hispanic tombs around Lima.We can imagine Giglioli's opulent mus­
---. 1997. The Social Life of Numbers. Austin: University of Texas Press. taches twitching with curiosity as he came face-to-face with two visages
Valderrama, Ricardo, and Carmen Escalante. 1980. "Apu Qorpuna: Vision del that were once human.1 They belonged to masks made from facial bones
mundo de los muertos en la comunidad de Awkimarka." Debates en Antro­ and mandibles of ancient Peruvians (figure 9.1).Giglioli's description of
pologia 5:233-64. the Peruvian find appeared in the Internationales Archiv fur Ethnologie in
---. 1988. Del Tata Mallku a la Mama Pacha: Riego, sociedad y ritos en las 1891 from whence the following description has been drawn.
Andes peruanos. Lima: DESCO, Centro de Estudios y Promoci6n del Desarollo. The "two masks made with the facial portions of human skulls ...were
Wachtel, Nathan.1977.The Vision of the Vanquished. New York: Barnes and Noble. dug up from huacas, the well/known Peruvian cities of the dead" (Giglioli
Yacovleff, Eugenio, and Fortunato Herrerra.1935."El mundo vegetal del los anti­ 1891, 85), perhaps meaning a cluster of funerary structures.The larger
guos peruanos." Revista del Museo Nacional del Peru 4(1):33-101. one (figures 9.1a, 9.1b) came from Matucana, a Huarochiri village and
Zuidema, R. Tom. 1973. "Kinship and Ancestorcult in Three Peruvian Commu­ (since 187 0) railroad station at 2,378 m above sea level in the middle
nities: Hernandez Principe's Account of 1622." Bulletin de zilnstitut Franrais Rimac River canyon. "The teeth, partly fallen out, partly lost during life
d'Etudes Andines 11(1):16-33. as the closed alveoli show, tell that the skull belonged to an elderly if not
Zuidema, R.Tom, and M. Ulpiano Quispe.1973. "A Visit to God." In Peoples and old man....The upper portion of this skin is bent and folded over the
Cultures of Native South America, edited by D. Gross, 358-76. Garden City, cut edge of the frontal bone" (ibid.).The nose,
NY: Doubleday/The Natural History Press.
is reconstructed with a light spongy wood, covered externally with a
white stucco, which looks as if it were principally made with lime; with
the same kind of stucco are reconstructed on the left side the upper lip
and the cheek; I believe over all this the skin was formerly stretched....
In the left orbit is embedded a disk of dark wood with a circular opening
corresponding in size and position to the eye in the centre (ibid.).
Turbulent Tombs 331

Giglioli concluded convincingly that "this was a true mask and used
as such" (ibid.) because, unlike ancient Peruvian trophy heads, which
have only one rope hole (Proulx 2001, 124), the Matucana specimen
was pierced doubly at the center top of the frontal bone with small holes
2 cm apart and 3 mm in diameter, and once at each temporal edge of the
skull. "There are yet the remains of the cords which evidently were used
to tie on the mask" (ibid.). Traces of red coloring were visible on the right
articular condyle of the mandible and on the inner portion of the maxilla.
Ligatures made with tendons could be seen on the left zygomatic arch and
on the mandibular ramus on the same side. The Matucana mask measured
16.5 cm in height and 13.5 cm in breadth by rectilinear measurement.
The other mask was smaller and less well preserved. It was from a huaca
(sacred place or object) at "Chacoy near Huacoy and Caudevilla, also in
the province of Lima." This seemingly refers to Huacoy, a chronologi­
cally deep site (called "ceremonial center") in the Chill6n Valley (Ludefia
1975). The second specimen is missing its mandible but seems to have
been similar in manufacture to the first. In Giglioli's judgment, the second
was an adult female, not of advanced age.
Giglioli had no way to guess what the masks were, only that they "were
. . . connected with mystic rites and ceremonies" (Giglioli 1891: 86). He
remarks rightly on their rarity; up to the present nothing similar seems to
have been reported in other collections. He was also right in inferring that
they are not to be classed with the false heads and faces now abundantly
known from mummies, but that rather they belonged to the living.
Today we know that what Mazzei had collected were two huayo (a
colonial spelling, whose modern Quechua equivalent would be wayu). The
term huayo in the sense of "facial-bone masks" pierced for hanging on a
living head is known from the 1608 Quechua-language Huarochirf Man­
uscript (sometimes known by its incipit "Runa yn[di]o fiiscap," meaning
"of the people called Indians"). The Jesuit Jacinto Barraza ([1609] cited
in Arguedas and Duviols [1966, 247]; see also Polia Meconi 1999, 278-
79) reported the same practice but without the name. The word wayu,
however, is not rare. Huayo corresponds to a verb root wayu-, meaning
"to hang" (intransitive). It occurs with very similar senses and numerous
derivatives in both Quechua and Aymara of the era (Gon�alez Holguin
1989 [1608], 196; Bertonio [1612] 1984, 158-59; Santo Tomas [1560]
2006, 645).
Talismanic hangings are a persistent Andean way of displaying fecun­
dating objects. The related pan-Andean modern word wayunka orwayunga
means a crop talisman consisting of twinned or otherwise extraordinary
maize cobs or tubers hung on a rafter. Modern sense of wayu as noun
include "fruit of a tree," "cord that serves for hanging clothes" (Carranza
332 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 333

2003, 278), and "produce something in abundance " (Cerr6n-Palomino And when a man was taken prisoner in war,that man himself would say,
1976,150; Parker 1976,193). "Brother,soon you'll kill me.I was a really powerful man,and now you're
The Checa ayllus of central Huarochiri,whose members narrated much about to make a huayo out of me.So before I go out onto the plaza,you
of the 1608 Quechua text,remembered a time,then not long past,when should feed me well and serve me drinks first."
villagers celebrated their origins by dancing and singing with a very special
huayo. It was the facial-bone mask of a heroic ancestor. The occasion A display of such facial-bone masks, trophies attesting Nan Sapa's
was their festival Masoma, the yunka-oriented half of a four-year cycle greatness as embodied in his progeny, looked down over this ceremony.
dramatizing the joint Yunka-Yauyo constitution of Checa villages.Masoma The five days of Masoma included a two-day cycle where the huayo of Nan
is documented only from the area of San Damian and Tupicocha in central Sapa,including the celebrant who wore it,rode in a litter.The huayo was
Huarochiri.As they danced and sang,the celebrants relived their emer­ then honored with festoons of food.
gence and proliferation from the remote shrine of Vichi Cancha. Part or
all of their ritual honored a person of that dawning time, apparently a Obeying this,they'd offer food and drinks to the other huayo, saying,
founding ancestor,called Nan Sapa.The text first tells about Nan Sapa's "This day you shall dance with me on the plaza." They used to bring out
facial-bone mask: the huayo and carry him in a litter for two days.On the following day,
they'd hang their maize,potatoes,and all the other offerings.
The one called Nan Sapa was a human being [i.e.,a mummy or mallld]. About this hanging people remarked,
Later on,the Inca took away the huaca himself.But they made another "[The huayo] will return to the place where he was born,the place
one to be his proxy.This is the one which we know Senor Doctor Fran­ called Uma Pacha,carrying these things along with them."
cisco de Avila carried away.
They say Nan Sapa, when he was human, wore the quisay rinri in The quote about Uma Pacha is the passage's apparent punch line,and
his ears and bore the canah yauri scepter in his hands.In ancient times, it is crucial to the purposes of this book.It explains the point of wearing
these were made of pure gold.The Inca carried off that gold.His staff was an ancient facial-bone mask and killing people to make new ones. The
named Engraved Rod.And the seashell named cori cacya came with it. class of semidivine beings called huayos, each constituted by a human
Saying,"He is our origin; it was he who first came to this village and mask and its wearer,could go to Uma Pacha and deliver offerings,which
took charge of it," people cut off his face and made it dance as if in his would in turn help the senders merit future plenty.
own persona. Uma Pacha,"Water Place " by a Jaqaru etymology (appropriate for this
region,whose ethnic tongue belonged to the Aymara family), was a class
Up to this point,the teller has explained that there once was a curated of holy places associated with primordial plenty in the form of irrigation
dead person, presumably a mummy or mallki named Nan Sapa, but the water from the heights.Taylor (1999,323 n.74) explains:
Inka took him and his golden regalia.A substitute stood in, and Father
Francisco de Avila took that one as well. It is not obvious from the text Omapacha is the generic or regional name for a huaca associated,on the
whether the villagers made the mask they had retained during original · one hand, with valor and warlike strength (conferred upon the various
mummification or by way of retaining a body part when the Inka took communities' warriors by the masks made from faces of ancient heroes
away the bundle. But now, thoroughly focused on the mask theme,the and from great camascas [persons charged with superhuman force]
narrator goes on to tell about the origin of other bone masks seen during captured in battle),and,on the other hand,with rites of fertility (the
Nan Sapa's festival; these were made from war prisoners.This practice is procession of the huayos, the making of chutas [target dolls,proper to a
reminiscent of Hans Staden's famous passage (Metraux 1948,122-26) different rite which complements Masoma],dances,and prayers)....
about captives of the Tupians on the far Atlantic shore of the continent. The name of Omapacha corresponds very well to the land of lakes-land
Captives of the Checa would elevate the honor of their own deaths by of water par excellence on the slopes of the Pariacaca mountain range,
speaking nobly to those who were about to butcher them: frdm whence came the Checa and the Concha.

If they captured a man in warfare,they would first cut off his face,and In chapter 31, the invaders of a village secure their access to water by
then make it dance,saying,"This is our valor!" investing a surviving aboriginal boy as priest of Uma Pacha.Apparently
334 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 335

any given community referred to its most important water shrine as Uma known pattern of postmortem activity was already underway; "they [the
Pacha. A similar usage is attested from modern Arequipa by Valderrama dead] were frequently manipulated and, in a sense, used as an important
and Escalante Gutierrez (1988, 187-89). piece of ritual paraphernalia." And if it has ceased-perhaps it has not-it
The text goes on to explain that the festival lasted five days (as most ceased only recently. Encased heads in display boxes of recent manufac­
festivals of the region did) and that it was practiced as well by the tellers' ture (Salomon 2002, 493) were Huarochiri family heirlooms as recently
opposite-moiety counterparts the Allauca. Chapter 31 explains that the as the 1990s. Modern use of ancestral body parts is a touchy ethnographic
festival with huayos was likewise practiced by the more separate but sim­ matter, because people are hypersensitive to the danger of ridicule about
ilarly constituted segment called the Concha. This, plus the mask from such intimate tokens of identity.
the Chill6n Valley, suggests that this particular way of "living with the "Disturbance" of tombs here acquires new meaning. What once looked
dead" was generalized in the Sierra de Lima fringes of the oldYunka orbit. like "noise" in the funerary record now looks like primary "signal." One
But how particular was it? The high-dwelling Huarochiranos who feted can gauge recent changes in understanding of Andean mortuary and its
facial bone masks were very much influenced by the legacy ofYunka ritu­ archaeology by taking as benchmark the 1991 papers edited by Tom Dille­
alism. They associated it with the hallowed traditions of valley-based agri­ hay as Tombs for the Living (1995). The change of viewpoint includes a
culture and especially with Pacha Kamaq, whose shrine center is situated shift of emphasis away from the sociology of death, which required focus
a short journey downslope at the Pacific end of their own hydrographic on corporate groupings and relationships (hierarchy, segmentation) that
basin. So it is not surprising that Checa rituals exhibit the central ten­ the dead were made to embody, toward actor-oriented foci: the ongoing
dencies newly explored in papers of this book. In taking the huayo as an assembly and disassembly of the dead as virtual persons, rather than pres­
emblem, we seek to underline these commonalities and their theoretical ervation of individuals occupying ever-stable roles. This change cannot be
implications. attributed to any particular empirical discovery. The remains were there
Sergio Barraza Lescano argues that the wayu was both widespread all along, of course, and "disturbance" was always before the researcher's
and chronologically deep. He cites a 1614 testimony about inhabitants eyes. What changed is the demands researchers make upon the evidence.
of San Francisco de Muscu, in the Checras Valley (a part of the Huaura Although only Buikstra's and Weismantel's contributions make the matter
drainage, not close to Huarochiri), dancing with "guayo" (2007, 14). He explicit, this volume's overall emphasis on turbulence in tombs as a record
considers that of agency at the heart of Andean mortuary seems related to a recent curve
in the paths of cultural anthropological theory.
huayo-type masks registered in the Sierra de Lima at the beginning of The demand for ethnographies of culture as agency-as pattern-making
the 17th century show a strong likeness to some of the so-called "scalp or pattern-breaking deeds of persons in the world-rather than as code
heads" [cabezas escalpes] of the much earlier Lima culture; these were or competence or habit hovering inferentially behind behavior, has given
made from the face of the skin and the hairy top of the head. In the momentum to inquiries into the nature of persons, as such. In 1995, the
case of the "scalp heads" recovered by Louis Sturner at Playa Grande, makers of tombs, like most sociological persons, were imagined as atomic
the flayed skins of two individuals' faces were sewn onto straw basketry persons, each with interests and roles in the ongoing game of using the
to form funerary masks. (Barraza Lescano 2009, 109) dead to shape a world for the living. By 2000 the British sociocultural
anthropologists Nigel Rapport and Joanna Overing, who hold fairly robust
At first glance, the empirical findings gathered in this volume are surpris­ views of the individual nature of agency, counted "individuality" as one of
ing, and the interpretations offered, though tentative, also imply changes the "key concepts" worth defending against corrosive critiques deriving
of framework about how Andean societies reproduced and changed them­ from, inter alia, social-psychological role theories, such as those of Peter
selves. The evident keynote throughout is the mutability of tombs. As Berger (2000, 185-95). But by 2005, ethnographers professed disquiet
Klaus and Tam argue, requies ceterna, "eternal rest," was hardly the fate of about the assumption that the body corresponds to one unitary person.
the Andean dead, for the ancient dead were intensely occupied with the Archaeologists correspondingly were freer to wonder whether a putative,
work of ongoing society. This was apparently an extremely durable cultural culturally recognized person needed be identified with one body. If ancient
disposition. Dulanto (2002, 99) suggests on the basis of Late Initial and Americans saw fit to rearrange parts of the dead, could one still assume
Early Horizon findings at the Lurin Valley site of Pampa Chica that ca. they were operating with any such premise as the atomic person? After all,
700-200 BCE, well before the cases studied here, the ethnohistorically one did not have to look farther than Amazonia to find funerary complexes
336 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 337

whose ideology asserted the departed to be the assembled sum of mate­ the archaeological studies at hand, we seem in a surprisingly similar way to
rial and nonmaterial exchanges, rather than skin-enclosed monads.Their see peri-mortuary practice as the theater in which varied kinds of persons
disassembly by endocannibalism asserted the mingled social substance of were constituted: the hybrid mortal cum mummy-like personage called
all in each (Conklin 2001, McCallum 1999). One must inquire, it was huayo, the mortal-like but indefinitely durable mallki, the trophy head
held, into who or what the thinkable, creditable subjects of action in a bridging animated and vegetal existence, and so on.
given society were. In entertaining this notion, we need not posit fanciful exotic psycholo­
Taking a leaf from Strathern's much-discussed T he Gender of the gies.There is no need to suppose that ancient thinkers flattened all kinds
Gift (1988), Weismantel suggests thinking of "the 'dividual' which posits of personhood onto one ontological plane any more than we confuse the
human beings who are internally composed of multiple social selves, and juridical personhood of corporations or the (contested) ethical person­
whose external relations open out into multiple ties of reciprocity and hood of fertilized cells with the "natural" personhood of flesh-and-blood
shared identity ... [so as to] build a South American version of Strath­ humans.In current ritual practice among the descendents of those who
ern's model-with regional variations." What might such a view be like? made huayos, the curcuches, or sacred buffoons of the rain festival (Jan­
The folk psychology of personhood as composed of multiple souls is, of uary 5-8), are masked proteges of the divine mountains sharply marked
course, a long-documented "regional variation" known from the study of off in ritual as ancient, mummy-like or hybrid half-human persons. It is,
Amazonian cultures.Shuaran peoples furnished the canonical case with of course, well known which villager's body is for the moment invested in
their trophy-head discourse of captured arutam, muisak, and other parts the virtual being created by a mask-plus-body combination and the role
of personhood. For the early twentieth-century Shuar different persons' it performs.W hat, then, might have been the personal status of the dead
component souls had different destinies, with sharply drawn correlates in composed out of bones from multiple organic individuals, or the dead as
the material treatment of the body.Proulx argues that Nasca trophy heads, reconstituted with heads and long bones retrieved from tombs?
which have some physical likenesses to Shuar shrunken heads, were none­ One inescapable conclusion to be drawn from the studies gathered here
theless different in their roles as virtual persons.Shown with plants issuing is that it is overly loose to speak of the preserved dead in such general
from them, they "were symbolic of, or a metaphor for, regeneration and terms as "ancestors," or conversely of the despoiled or disassembled, or
rebirth" (2001, 135).Frame (2001, 69-72) amplifies the point with textile otherwise unenshrined dead as beings so destroyed as to annul any ances­
icon examples.Does this kind of imagery then posit a "vegetative soul," and tral status.The emphasis on genealogical order and inheritance character­
is its locus particularly the head? Those who explained the huayo in Huaro­ istic of earlier syntheses about the cemetery as a "place of the ancestors
chiri seem to have been thinking along rather similar lines, although their in the space of the living" (Silverman 2002, 4) is not wrong, but it may be
Late Intermediate cultural background is rarely compared with Nasca. partial.Some of the remembered dead were not in cemeteries and others
The papers assembled here often resonate together with cultural were not ancestors (in Meyer Fortes' definition, 1965, 124): "An ancestor
anthropological discussion of the multiplicity of ways a "person" can come is a named dead forebearer who has living descendants of a designated
into or out of being.This way of phrasing the "person" problem has clearer genealogical class representing his continued structural relevance. In
affinities to archaeology than the synchronic, sociological way of analyzing ancestor worship such an ancestor receives ritual service and tendance
each life as partible by virtue of the heterogeneous, simultaneous bonds of directed specifically to him by the proper class of his descendants." Mor­
social existence. In the recent synthesis "The Anthropology of the Begin­ tuary practice apparently encoded multiple orders of society. Views of
nings and Ends of Life," Kauffman and Morgan (2005, 318) examine "partible self" would emphasize that the perceived component "souls" of
"the making and unmaking of persons and relationships ... [and] varied a person emerge in the course of varied relationships.Among them gene­
ways that humans constitute and disassemble themselves and their social alogy is only one, and not necessarily the most germane.Others include,
worlds." They emphasize that the beginnings and endings of life are partic­ for example, relations of enmity or healing.A landscape studded with
ularly fecund occasions on which to produce varied kinds of persons.The differently disposed, differently dead folk (the entombed, the trophied, the
matter jumps to the attention of the most future-oriented, least archaeo­ destroyed) would have been one marked out for the many relationships
logical ethnographers because current technology increasingly confronts that explain, uphold, and sometimes endanger order among the living.The
us with humans in states lacking clear or complete Western personal question expands beyond the genealogical matters which Bloch and Parry
standing: zygotes in vitro, embryos and fetuses in pregnancy, stem cells, (1982), in the Hertzian tradition, saw as the core of mortuary practice.
the comatose or "brain-dead," or the severely demented. Nonetheless in A territory imagined this way would have constituted a vast information
338 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 339

base, as well as a social web locking its tenants into untold obligations; it all of you will go in this direction[,"] showing them toward where the sun
would have been a treasure and a terrible burden. rises[,] and separating out each one by himself and showing each the
As Millaire underlines in his report on a "new hybrid religion" contem­ straight line he was to follow (Diez de Betanzos [1551] 1987, 11-12).
poraneous with Middle Horizon impacts on the North Coast, information
about or from the dead was not inherently conservative. The meanings According to Betanzos, the messengers from Tiwanaku then spread across
of "the past in the past" were perhaps understood at times as discoveries the earth calling forth the different peoples:
rather than patrimonies. According to Millaire, residents of several Middle
Horizon North Coast settlements saw fit to sacrifice young people and They went through the provinces which the viracocha had told them
animals upon the remains of what were then already archaeological struc­ of[,] in each province calling out3 as they arrived[,] each one of them
tures (some apparently of no particularly sacred import in their own ages). through the place they traveled to the particular province, [to] the ones
Millaire asks whether they did so on the basis of specific archaeological whom the viracocha in Tiaguanaco showed them in stone[, saying] that
knowledge via oral traditions, interpretations of sacred space, or fresh in the designated province they would come out[,] putting each one of
"discovery" of a "bequest from the ancestors." these viracochas there next to the place where the particular people
Although it is an anachronistic comparison, Millaire's findings bring to from there had to come out[,] and seeing this viracocha there in this
mind the attitudes of a much later people, the Inkas, who also honored way he would say: 4 [ "] So-and-so [people,5] come out and settle this
the still-impressive sacred legacy of the Middle Horizon (Conklin 2004). land which is empty[,] because the Contiti Viracocha who made the
We know about this thanks to Juan Diez de Betanzos, who was among world orders it so[,"] and as soon as these [persons] called6 [,] them[,]
the first Spaniards to occupy Cuzco, and who enjoyed privileged access to the designated peoples came out of those parts and places which were
elite Inka tradition via his Inka wife's kin. In the first and second chapters mentioned for them by the viracocha[,] and so they say these went along
of a recently recovered complete manuscript, Betanzos explained that the calling forth and bringing out the peoples from the caves[,] rivers[,]
Inkas regarded the already-ancient shrine of Tiwanaku as the ur-shrine springs[,] and high mountains (Betanzos [1551] 1987, 13-15).
of all Andean peoples. There the deity Contiti Wiracocha had at a remote
time fashioned stone "prototypes" (dechados, the term meaning a studio Those who credited such a myth, then, would have seen the ethno­
rough-out for a statue or a cartoon for a mural) of all the peoples of the geographical landscape in a way that was perhaps revelatory in its day; the
Andes. He kept the prototypes at Tiwanaku and dispatched his demiurges distribution of peoples over land would no longer appear as the accumu­
to proceed on straight, ceque-like lines (a Quechua term for line or ray; in lated haphazard consequence of struggles among heterogeneous huacas
Inka Cusco). Forty-one hierarchically ordered imaginary ceques radiated and their peoples but rather the reflection of an all-embracing cosmogony
out of its sun temple and served to order and symbolize calendrical, ritual, ordained from the start. A 2008 book relevant to this one, Arnold and Has­
social and political aspects of the city. Similarly, the paths of the demiurges torf's Heads of State, makes a related argument contrasting "centripetal" to
marked out all the points where future ethnic groups in their likeness "centrifugal" systems of power (as characterized by the Arnazonianist Carlos
would live. Betanzos writes: Fausto). The former refers to systems that concentrate on vertical lines of
inheritance around fixed central ancestors, for example, foundational mum­
And as he had finished making them he ordered all his people to mies. The latter refers to systems that acquire and innovatively coordinate
depart[,] all those that he had with him there[,] leaving only two in his funerary objects of power. The captive-into-huayo process works this way
company[,] whom he told to watch those forms,2 and [told them] the physically, while the dechado argument in Betanzos does so conceptually.
names that he had given each kind of those [people,] showing them and For pre-Columbian thinkers, ancients in the earth, whether of human
telling them[, "]These will be called so-and-so, and they will come from bone or of stone (stone being taken as the highest stage of permanence),
such-and-such spring in such-and-such province[,] and they will settle would likewise have become interpretable as signs of underlying regularity,
in it, and there they will be increased, and these others will come out of or intelligible "traces of creation." This may have given practitioners of
so-and-so cave and will be called the whichevers[,] and they will settle Middle Horizon cult motive to respect ancient remains more assiduously
in so-and-so place[,] and just as I have them painted and made of stone than members of localistic cults would have.
here, just so they are to come out of the springs and rivers and caves and But what, then, was the theory about the nature of the enduring dead?
hills in the provinces which I have thus told you and named[,] and then We already know from earlier studies (Urioste 1981) that the entombed
340 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 341

dead were thought to be mature products of a process inherent in the The "adherence" or "sticking" of the forceful spirit (Duviols 1978, Taylor
whole lifecycle.As Duviols (1977, 317-18) and Catherine Allen (1982) 1974-1976) to the "heart" of a human is one of a cluster of glosses for
concluded, life's course could be imagined in the likeness of plant repro­ this word. When the villagers of San Francisco de Cajamarquilla appealed
duction, as a progression from the tender, wet, and fast-changing to the to their burned parents Raupoma and Chuquirunto, invoking them as
stiff, dry, and durable, with the mature plant yielding a small seed of life "flower of fire, tongue of fire," the ancestors replied with a warning:
before passing to rigid permanence. The present group of studies under­
lines the ongoing social business of managing human association with the Kunka ratakunqa, mana mikuy kanqacu.
dead, who, it now appears, were (also like plants) taken as partible beings Las gargantas se estrecharan, no habra comida. (Itier 2003, 784)
whose parts might be managed and cultivated.It is logical, in the context Throats will constrict [from thirst], there will be no food.
of the disassembled dead, that Allen emphasizes the semantic complex
rakiy, whose common denominator is the idea "division of a whole." The In San Francisco de Mangas, the extirpators captured some songs to the
scope of the term includes the division of a product in portions (hence unburned mummies Coya Huarmi and her brother Condortocas (Itier
rakiy as the name of the apportioning pot), of a canal in branches, or of a 2003, 810-11), celebrating how they came from water to dwell on land:
Cuzco Quechua person into her or his inner durable, part (alma) and her
Cusi qayanman
fleshly outer part (animu).
Llaclla qayanman,
The many approaches to partibility of the person, and of the forma­
Pasarcutaman,
tion of nonordinary persons by the compounding of human parts, beg
ratamurqanki,
a question neither ethnography nor archaeology has yet answered. The
quyawarmi,
question is, if a person is divisible, what then holds the elements of life
pallaywarmi
together at all? And if rakiy is what happens in death, when the departure
Turiykiwan,
of the seed-like soul from the enduring and remaining structure of the
Mamaykiwan
body points toward future generativity at the expense of wholeness, then
ratamunkitaq kay mama queapita.
what is it that happens to bring a person into being or to reconstitute one?
Since Dillehay's 1995 compendium, Cesar Itier has edited and trans­ En el qayan de Cusi,
lated with careful linguistic apparatus the 56 fragments of Quechua sacred en el qayan de Llaclla,
speech caught and transcribed by the extirpators of idolatry in Cajatambo en Pisarcuta,
during the mid-seventeenth century. Many, if not most, of these are invo­ viniste a posarte,
cations to mallkis. Some address whole mummies, and others address reina,
the "burned fathers" or sacred cineraries which Cajatambinos made from princesa,
the ashes of ancestors whom the Catholic persecutors had torched.Their con tu hermano,
wording occasionally gives clues to worshipers' notions about what binds con tu madre,
elements of life.An important verb in these passages is ratay. The great
oracle of the mallkis Hernando Hacas Poma used it-and a translator (The unglossed qayan often means a stone-edged plaza.) There then follow
accidentally let it stand in the text-while he was explaining the inward three mutually similar invocations to Condortocas, male counterpart of
state he felt while dialoguing with ancestors: the female mallki Coya Huarmi. All three use forms of ratay the same way.
The third (Itier 2003, 810-814) says:
[In the presence of the ancestors] this witness [Hacas Poma] experienced
ecstasy, was deprived of his senses, and heard inside himself that the said Cussi qayanman
malqui was speaking to him ...having made the sacrifices he embraced Llaclla qayanman
the idol Guamancama, and he experienced another ecstasy and he said Pisarcutaman
that the camaquen [forceful spirit] of the said malqui ratacurca [Quechua: Ratamurqanki
adhered to him] and descended to his heart and told him what to do in the Apu Condortocas
matter on which they were consulting him. (Duviols 1986, 143) T iqsi mama queapita,
342 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 343

quya paniykiwan, as, for example, one object held on another by gravity, but rather that
palla paniykiwan energy is expended and kinetic balance asserted.
Thus the position of the dead and their composition as persons may
0

En el qayan de Cusi, have been anything but a "hewn in stone" matter. Lira's examples all
En el qayan de Llaclla, concern one entity propagating itself by invading and then occupying,
En Pisarcuta changing and/or consuming another. Such, too, might have been the expe­
Viniste a posarte rience of the person who donned the huayo. Awareness that to assume
Senor Condortocas, the virtual "life" of the dead was to offer up a part of one's own substance
Desde el mar subterraneo may help us understand the emic or ideological side of "dead body poli­
con la reina tu hermana, tics" (in Buikstra and Nystrom's phrase)-a political economy partaking
con la princesa tu hermana. of struggle and inequality. The apparent shift from secondary burial to
mummy curation among the Chachapoyas of the Inka era would, as they
Gon<;alez Holguin, who lived into the beginning of central-Peruvian suggest, entail "fundamental changes in the concept of the ancestors and
extirpations but who was more southern in linguistic orientation, noted therefore of social memory." The standout difference between the two
several derivatives of a root ratta-: "for something to stick to something funerary customs is that the latter prevents the kind of bodily reassembly
else[,] to make something stick to the hand, that is, to steal[,] for someone characterizing the coastal cultures studied here. It suggests, therefore,
to always go around sticking with [someone or somebody]." A "rasttak­ a tilt toward enshrining and dogmatically preserving identities and rela­
handed" [sic] person was "a little thief with hands that anything will stick tions. Perhaps those under Inka rule incurred more "expense of spirit"
to," and rataratay was a burr (1989 [1608], 314). In the Cuzco region and matter to create a past more determinate than would be the case in
in modern times Jorge Lira (1941 [1982], 248) compiled the following a society where relations among the dead and the living remained chancy
usages: "RATAY Seizure, act and effect of seizing. To seize, catch, take and, literally, mobile.
hold of. To hold one thing in the grip of another." RATAYKUY, for one Shimada's group found at Pachacamac traces of mummies who had
thing to stick very strongly to another, for an adhesive material to catch or been removed from spots in a select cemetery. They also see indications
stick very well." 7 Lira then gives concrete examples: a flame that catches that densely emplaced burial pits awaited those without access to prime
and keeps spreading (see also Parker 1969, 188), a plant that strikes roots, graves. The placement of the dead, therefore, echoed the territorial rivalry
or a disease that infects contagiously. Hornberger and Hornberger (1983, common in such land-scarce, inheritance-oriented societies as Andean
215) mention an additional sense for ratakuy, as to "get along well, be and coastal irrigation zones. In some extirpation trials, we learn that
comfortable with someone." Guardia Mayorga (1967 [1953], 151) exem­ upay marca, the imagined farm of spirits where life-seeds released from
plifies the verb with the perching of a butterfly on a branch. For Central mummies returned to germinate, seemed (perhaps due to epidemics)
Quechuas (Quechua I), which are relevant to the sites of extirpation, so crammed that the new dead could find but a fingernail's breadth of
one finds the senses "to be lit, to take fire, to fall, to reach, to get to [in ground. For the dead, then, to ratay, to take root, to consume, and exert
sense of raise a subject]" (Adelaar 1977, 472). For ratakuy, it is "to hide themselves in mutuality with a given place, entailed a costly commitment
or seek a hiding place" (Carranza 2003, 196). The common Quechua I for the living. Management of such expenses could have implied decisions
phonetic alternation r/1 produces latay "for something to stick immobile about defense of interred persons, or withdrawal from them, and perhaps
to a wall," as a bird might (Cerr6n-Palomino 1976, 77). With a cislocative in some form extinction. "Structural amnesia" and the logic of "ances­
suffix, ratay yields a central Peruvian verb meaning for the sun to come tor obliteration" were long-standing concerns of structural-functionalist
out (Parker 1976, 150). These give vivid suggestions of how Cajatambi­ African ethnography (Fortes 1965). The prospect of the partible ancestor,
nos might have imagined such an entity as the kamaq or "forceful spirit" and, in Klaus and Tam's findings, the absence of an immense quantity
attaching itself to the body of its deceased owner or to that of an oracle. of otherwise expectable bone, may allow speculation that ancestors of
These usages help us imagine the energetic and perhaps intense or even decreasingly urgent integrity could be folded by metonymic gestures into
consuming action needed to bring together the objects that we find in the more general shrines.
earth merely juxtaposed. Many of these examples have in common a sug­ Over the past two decades, which included a boom period in both
gestion that objects that hold together rataspa are not in stable association North Coast archaeology and Middle Horizon studies, scholars have
344 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 345

become more wary about positing "Andean" generalities that override Bertonio, Ludovico. (1612) 1984. Vocabulario de la lengua aymara. Cochabamba:
great regional differences in culture. Yet in highlighting practices that Centro de Estudios de la Realidad Econ6mica y Social, Instituto Frances de
were apparently deep rooted and far flung across many regional traditions Estudios Andinos, y Museo Nacional de Etnograffa y Folklore.
by the Early Intermediate, the contributors in this book more than hint Bloch, Maurice, andJonathan Parry. 1982. "Introduction: Death and the Regener­
at what Weismantel calls a generalized South American "metaphysical ation of Life." In Death and the Regeneration of Life, edited by Maurice Bloch
system." The papers gathered here probe at unsuspected commonalities. and Jonathan Parry, 1-44. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
But whether the turbulence of tombs expressed enduring and hegemonic Carranza Romero, Francisco. 2003. Diccionario Quechua Ancashino-Castellano.
propositions, or particular beliefs and contingencies that arose in tense Frankfurt: Iberoamericana y Vervuert.
conjunctures, or a long-standing tension and alternation between coexist­ Cerr6n-Palomino, Rodolfo. 1976. Diccionario Quechua Junin-Huanca. Lima:
ing ideals about how to live with the dead is a question that the ancients Ministerio de Educaci6n e Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
have yet to unseal. The very fact that living pre-Columbian people now Conklin, Beth A 2001. Consuming Grief Compassionate Cannibalism in an Ama­
appear to us as never-resting manipulators and consumers of the goodness zonian Society. Austin: University of Texas Press.
of the deceased makes them more interesting as our human peers. Conklin, William J. 2004. "Las piedras textiles de Tiwanaku." In Tiwanaku: Aproxi­
maciones a sus contextos historicos y socials, compiled by MarioA. Rivera y Alan L.
Kolata.Santiago, Chile: Editorial Universidad Bolivariana.
Notes Diez de Betanzos, Juan. (1551) 1987. Suma y narraci6n de los Incas, edited by
Marfa del Carmen Martin Rubio. Madrid: Ediciones Atlas.
1. http://www.phthiraptera.org/phthirapterists/giglioli/giglioli.htm. Dillehay, Tom D., ed. 1995. Tombs for the Living: Andean Mortuary Practices.
2. I.e., the " models" mentioned above. Washington, DC: Dumbarton Oaks Research Library.
3. "Llamando en": sense not certain. Dulanto, Jalh. 2002. "The Archaeological Study of Ancestor Cult Practices: The
4. Colon in M. R. transcription. Case of Pampa Chica, a Late Initial Period and Early Horizon Site on the
5. Supplied to convey plural form of imperative verbs. Central Coast of Peru." In The Space and Place of Death, edited by Helaine
6. Past subjunctive verb. Silverman and David B. Small, 97-117.Archaeological Papers of theAmerican
7. "Prendimiento, acto y efecto de prender. Prender, cager, asir. Haser presa Anthropological Association, No. 11. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell.
una cosa en otra. . . . Inflamar una llama en otra, empezar a arder. Arraigar una Duviols, Pierre. (1972) 1977. La destrucci6n de las religiones andinas (conquista y
planta. Contagiar, pasar con contagio una enfermedad. . . . Pegarse muy fuerte­ colonia) (Albor Maruenda, trans.). Mexico D.F.: UniversidadAut6noma Nacio­
mente una cosa en otra, prender o cager muy bien una material adhesive." nal de Mexico.
---. 1978. "'Camaquen, Upani': Un Concept animiste des anciens Peruvi­
ens." In Amerikanistische Studien. Festschrift fur Hermann Trimborn, edited by
References Roswith Hartmann and Udo Oberem, Vol. 1, 132-44. St.Augustin: Collectanea
lnstituti Anthropos, 20.
Adelaar, W. F. H. 1977. Tarma Quechua Grammar, Texts, Dictionary. Lisse: Neth­ ---. 1986. Cultura andina y represi6n: procesos y visitas de idolatrias y hechicerias,
erlands: The Peter de Ridder Press. Cajatambo, siglo XVII. Cuzco: Centro de lnvestigaciones Rurales Andinos.
Allen, Catherine. 1982. "Body and Soul in Quechua Thought." Journal of Latin Archivos de HistoriaAndina 5.
American Lore 8(2):179-96. Fortes, Meyer. 1965. "Some Reflections on Ancestor Worship inAfrica." In African
Arguedas, Jose Marfa, and Pierre Duviols, eds. and trans. 1966. Dioses y hom­ Systems of Thought, edited by Meyer Fortes and G. Dieterlen, 122-44. London:
bres de Huarochiri. Lima: Museo Nacional de Historia, Instituto de Estudios Oxford University Press.
Peruanos. Frame, Mary. 2001. "Blood, Fertility, and Transformation: Interwoven Themes
Arnold, Denise, and Christine Hastorf. 2008. Heads of State: Icons, Power, and in the Paracas Necropolis Embroideries." In Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru,
Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes. Walnut Creek, CA: Left Coast edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and Anita B. Cook, 55-92. Austin: University
Press, Inc. of Texas Press.
Barraza Lescano, Sergio. 2009. "Apuntes hist6rico- arqueol6gicos en torno a la The Geographical Journal. February 1910. Vol. 35, No. 2, 205. Obituary: Prof.
danza del Huac6n." Anthropologica (Lima) 27:93-121. Henry Hillyer Giglioli.
346 SALOMON Turbulent Tombs 347

Giglioli, Henry Hillyer. 1891. "On Two Ancient Peruvian Masks Made with the Warszawa, Poland: Sociedad Polaca de Estudios Latinoamericanos; Jerusalem,
Facial Portion of Human Skulls." Internationales Archiv fiir Ethnographie Israel: Universidad Hebrea de Jerusalen.
4:83-87. Silverman, Helaine. 2002. "Introduction: The Space and Place of Death." In T he
Gonc;alez Holguin, Diego. (1608) 1989. Vocabulario de la lengua general de todo el Space and Place of Death, edited by Helaine Silverman and David B. Small.
Peru llamada lengua Qquichua o del Inca. Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor Arlington, Va.: American Anthropological Association, 2-11. Archaeological
de San Marcos, Instituto de Historia. Papers of the American Anthropological Association.
Guardia Mayorga, Cesar. (1953) 1967. Diccionario Kechwa-Castellano Castellano­ Taylor, Gerald. 1974-1976. "Camay, camac, et camasca dans le manuscrit quec­
Kechwa. Lima: Editorial Los Andes. hua de Huarochirf." Journal de la Societe desAmericanistes 63:231-43.
Hornberger, Nancy, and Stephen Hornberger. 1983. Diccionario trilingiie Quec­ ---, ed. and trans. 1999. Ritos y tradiciones de Huarochiri. Lima: Instituto
hua de Cusco. La Paz: Qoya Raymi. Frances de Estudios Andino, Banco Central de Reserva del Peru, y Universidad
Itier, Cesar. 2003. "Apendice: Textos quechuas de los procesos de Cajatambo." Particular Ricardo Palma.
In Procesos y visitas de idolatrias. Cajatambo, siglo XVII, edited and compiled Urioste, George. 1981. "Sickness and Death in Preconquest Andean Cosmology:
by Pierre Duviols, 779-818. Lima: Pontificia Universidad Cat6lica del Peru­ The Huarochiri Oral Tradition." In Health in the Andes, edited by Joseph Bas­
Fondo Editorial e Instituto Frances de Estudios Andinos. tien and John Donahue, 9-18. Washington, DC: American Anthropological
Kaufman, Sharon R., and Lynn M. Morgan. 2005. "The Anthropology of the Association.
Beginnings and Ends ofLife." Annual Review ofAnthropology 34:317-41. Valderrama, Ricardo, and Carmen Escalante Gutierrez. 1988. Del Tata Mallku a
Lira, Jorge. (1941) 1982. Diccionario Kkechuwa-Espaiiol. 2da edici6n. Bogota: la Mama Pacha: riego1 sociedad y ritos en las Andes peruanos. Lima: DESCO,
Secretarfa Ejecutiva Permanente del Conveio "Andres Bello"-SECAB, Insti­ Centro de Estudios y Promoci6n del Desarrollo.
tuto Internacional de Integraci6n e Insittuto Andino de Artes Populares.
Ludefia Restaure, Hugo. 1975. "Secuencia Cronol6gica y Cultural del Valle del
Chill6n." PhD diss., Programa Academico de Arqueologfa. Lima, Universidad
Nacional Mayor de San Marcos.
McCallum, Cecilia. 1999. "Consuming Pity: The Production of Death Among the
Cashinahua." Cultural Anthropology 14(4):443-71.
Metraux, Alfred. 1948. "The Tupinamba." In Handbook of SouthAmerican Indians.
Vol. 3, The Tropical Forest Tribes, edited by Julian Steward, 95-134. Washing­
ton, DC: Smithsonian Institution, Bureau of American Ethnology.
Parker, Gary John. 1969. Ayacucho Quechua Grammar and Dictionary. Mouton:
The Hague.
---. 1976. Diccionario quechua Ancash-Huailas. Lima: Ministerio de Edu­
caci6n e Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
Polia Meconi, Mario, ed. 1999. La cosmovisi6n religiosa andina en las documentos
ineditos delArchivo Romano de la Compafiia de Jesus, 1581-1752. Lima: Pon­
tificia Universidad Cat6lica del Peru.
Proulx, Donald A. 2001. "Ritual Uses of Trophy Heads in Ancient Nasca Society."
In Ritual Sacrifice in Ancient Peru, edited by Elizabeth P. Benson and Anita B.
Cook, 119-36. Austin: University of Texas Press.
Rapport, Nigel, and Joanna Overing. 2000. Social and CulturalAnthropology: T he
Key Concepts. London: Routledge.
Salomon, Frank. 2002. "Un-Ethnic Ethnohistory: On Peruvian Peasant Historiog­
raphy and Ideas of Autochthony." Ethnohistory 49(3):475-506.
Santo Tomas Domingo de. (1560) 2006. Lexicon1 o Vocabulario de la lengua general del
Peru, ed. Jan Szeminski. Cusco, Peru: Convento de Santo Domingo-Qorikancha;