Towards a situated ontology of bodies and landscapes in the archaeology of the southern Andes (first millennium AD northwest Argentina)

Abstract

Archaeological reconstructions of past relational and animated worlds have built on Andean concepts such as Apu, wa’ka, and Pacha, as well as Indigenous Amazonian theories. In our case, we work with Amazonian perspectivism as a broad-based Amerindian ontology to analyze landscape and bodies in the of the case of the archaeological culture “La Candelaria” from Andean northwest Argentina. Perspectivism provides us with a radically different ontological premise for the world: things do not need to be animated, neither are they perceived as animated; they simply are, fundamentally, animated. Starting from that premise, we understand ‘dwelling’ -- the relationship between landscape and beings -- as a profoundly relational activity where human and non-human bodies participate actively. Recognizing the theoretical mutuality of the concepts of body and landscape in archaeology, we explore what happens to the “landscape” when we start from an alternative ontology of bodies. To that end, we explore how La Candelaria peoples appear to have existed in two quite different environments (yungas and semiarid valleys) in the first millennium CE. By way of explanation, we argue that people did not “perceive” or “experience” a “landscape” as such; rather people experienced “social” relationships with other beings that inhabited and, indeed, constituted the world.