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The Dead and the Drying: Techniques forTransforming People and Things in the Andes

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259

Articles

THE DEAD AND THE DRYING

Techniques for Transforming People and Things in the

Andes

BILL SILLAR

Department of Archaeology, University of Wales

Abstract

Many aspects of a culture’s technology, such as techniques, tools or raw

materials, are elaborated as metaphors or areas of meaning within the

culture’s ideology. The choice of raw materials and the techniques used to

process them depend on the representation of these materials and tech-

niques within society. Such ’technical representations’ play an importantrole in the trajectory of social and technological change. Examples drawn

from present-day pottery making in the South-Central Andes are comparedto other subsistence activities in the area to show how techniques may be

used in a widerange

of different social contexts. This has imbued the tech-

niques with culturally specific meanings, which affects the choice of con-

texts within which they are considered appropriate. It is suggested that the

storage systems developed by the Inka were a reworking of the techniquesused in the burial tradition that emerged in the preceding Late Intermediate

Period. The previous context of death gave a meaning to the technique, a

meaning that was utilized within the technique’s new application for state

storage.

Key Words; cultural change ; pottery ; storage ; technical

representation ; technology.

INTRODUCTION

When we peel a potato, shave with a cut-throat razor, sharpen a pencilwith a pen-knife, or scrape the subcutaneous fat off a hide, we are usingvery similar techniques in quite different contexts. It would be possible








260

to use the same tool for all these activities. Indeed, I expect that special-

ized, task-specific tools were only developed once these techniques wereconsciously separated from each other with different people doing themin different places at different times. We should not forget that most of

these activities could be achieved through other techniques. For

instance, potatoes need not be peeled at all, or their skin may be peeledoff by hand after boiling - a common technique in the Andes. Tweezers

can be used to remove facial hair. Animal skins can be cured with salt

and then rubbed with a stone.

The human propensity to borrow techniques from one area for

application to novel activities has been central to our cultural develop-ment. This is not simply a question of clever inventions that performtasks more efficiently. The perception of a problem in need of a solu-

tion and the choice of a particular technique or combination of tech-

niques to surmount it is heavily embedded within wider culturalperceptions. The invention of the pencil was only possible within a

culture that prioritized writing as a form of communication, and the

pencil could not have been developed if it were not already a common

practice to use a knife to whittle wood. In fact the European fascina-

tion with metal and blade technology has been central to much of the

region’s social and technological development. This not only shaped the

techniques applied to vegetable processing, carpentry and tailoring; also

the central importance of aristocratic swordsmen to the development of

Iron Age and later feudal society partly came about through the manipu-lation of blade technology. I do not wish to privilege the mechanical or

functional aspects of these techniques, however, as it is as much the cul-

tural meaning or significance of these tools and techniques as their

physical nature that has made them so important. Perhaps because

blade technology was considered prestigious and associated with

’sharp’ ideas it was drawn upon and developed in novel directions. This

kept blade technology at the ’cutting edge’ of innovation. These

examples of word play may seem rather tangential to my argument, but

they are fundamental. The way that techniques and tools are conceived

of and used as metaphors within the language express fundamental cul-

tural attitudes. When we talk of ’paring away superfluous material’, or

’using Ockham’s razor to cut someone’s argument down to its central

point’ we are at the same time reinforcing the centrality of these tech-

niques within our culture.

While many authors have investigated the choice of raw materials

and techniques used in terms of environmental restraints and maximiz-

ing efficiency (e.g. Arnold, 1985; Bronitsky, 1986; Schiffer and Skibo,

1987), several anthropologists have suggested that techniques may be

better understood as cultural choices that are as dependent on local ’rep-resentations’ as any ultimate scientific measure of functionality (e.g.








261

Latour, 1993; Lemonnier, 1986, 1992, 1993; Pfaffenberger, 1988). In this

paper I would like to add to the latter approach by suggesting that manyaspects of technical understanding are fundamental, and sometimes very

explicit, aspects of a culture’s ideology. I shall begin by looking at several

features that recur in the processing of different materials in the South-

Central Andes, particularly clay for pottery production. I suggest that the

potters have drawn upon techniques that cross-cut many spheres-of Andean technology and that the techniques themselves have become

imbued with culturally specific meanings. I also suggest that it has been

precisely these culturally specific meanings that were utilized in decid-

ing how to overcome technical problems in the past, and that they helpedshape the direction of technical and social change.

MAKING POTS

Pottery production is surprisingly consistent throught the South-Central

Andes both in terms of the techniques used as well as in the organiz-ation of production. All the pottery production I have observed is organ-ized at the household level. Pottery forming usually involves the use of

a flat slab of clay to form the base, and large thick coils that are further

thinned by drawing the clay up to form the sides (Figures 1 and 2). The

firing normally involves placing the pots on a flat surface that has a low

protective wall around the base of the firing and then covering the

vessels with fuel, frequently dried dung.This is not to say that alternative methods are not known about and

used - two-, three- and four-part moulds are used for slip casting in the

Pucara area, the potter’s wheel and kilns are used in both Pucara and

Huayculi, kilns are also used in Paracay and were being introduced to

Charamoray while I was there (see Figure 3 for these locations). But the

underlying grammar of pottery-making technology, described above,

appears to be characteristic of the South-Central Andes and is consis-

tently reported by a number of authors (e.g. Arnold, 1993; Donnan, 1971;

Hagstrum, 1988; O’Neal, 1977; Ravines, 1978; Ravines and Villiger,1989; Tschopik, 1950).

These techniques can be compared with those from many other

areas of the world (c.f. van der Leeuw, 1993). In present-day Peru the

potters of the North Coast and North-Central Andes use paddle and anvil

techniques (e.g. Bankes, 1985; Sabogal Wiesse, 1982; Sosa, 1984) and

make substantial use of press moulds even for large forms (e.g. Ravines,

1989; Krzanowska and Kranowski, 1989). In the eastern lowlands of the

Amazon basin pottery is made using far thinner coils and pots are fired,often only one vessel at a time, by placing them on top of thick wooden

branches that are used as the fuel (DeBoer and Lathrap, 1979; Ravines

and Villiger, 1989). These wide-ranging cultural traditions show








262

FIGURE i The formation process for a cooking pot (manka) in Machaca

underlying technical grammars that the potters have reproduced for

generations. In some cases these techniques are not unique to potterymanufacture. For instance, the firing technique used in the Amazon








263

FIGURE 2 Forming the base of a cooking pot (manka) in Machaca

F I G U R E 3 The South-Central Andes showing locations mentioned in the text








264

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265

basin is very similar to cooking methods used in the area. Indeed it is

perhaps inherent in human thought processes thatwe

derive the solu-tion to current problems by drawing upon areas of our prior experienceand knowledge that we consider analogous. This ’bricolage’ approach to

life is, perhaps, one of the defining features of human cognition. Par-

ticularly when craft production is embedded in the daily or seasonal

round of household activities each individual performs many different

tasks, and there is a substantial sharing of cultural know-how, techniquesand tools across different activities. By considering the application of

similar techniques in several different contexts we can come to a better

understanding of the cultural meaning of technology.

PROCESSING THE CLAY AND TEMPER

Throughout the Andes it is common to prepare clay by drying it out,

grinding it down, mixing it with other clays, tempers and water, and then

kneading the mixture in some way before forming pots with it. However,not every community follows all of these steps in the same way. Table 1

shows some elements of the variation in paste preparation in 11 pottery-making areas. Men and women are equally capable of any of these tasks,but there is an evident sexual division of labour, some aspects of which

appear to be more pan-Andean than others.

In many cases it is necessary to break down the clay and temper bypounding or grinding in some way so that any large granules can be

removed or crushed. The most common method is to use an Andean

rocker mill - which works by rolling a curved stone (like a thick cres-

cent moon in shape) over a flat, or slightly concave, base, thus crushingthe material underneath (Figure 4). The rocker mill is a widespread partof Andean technology that has different names in different areas (e.g.tunawa and maran in Cuzco, kutana and kutana una in North Potosi). It

is a very efficient way of grinding materials and is used to grind malted

grain used for brewing beer, as well as vegetables for cooking. Perhapsit is because of the association of this object with cooking that when it

comes to grinding clays and tempering materials and lead for the glaze,women often perform this task, even in communities where men nor-

mally form the pottery (Figure 5). Another technique for sorting clays and tempers is to pound the

material with a pole and then sieve it. This technique appears to derive

from a method of processing grains and beans prior to winnowing. If

this is the case it may be of Indo-European origin, perhaps brought to

the Andes from Europe along with the crops. Spanish and/or Andean per-

ceptions appear to have seen this aspect of crop processing as inappro-priate for women, and wherever I have seen pounding used for crop or

clay processing it has been done by men.








266

F I G U R E 4 Grinding the clay using a tunawa and maran in Araypallpa

In both Huayculi, Cochabamba, Bolivia, and Charamoray, Cuzco,

Peru, blind men have to some extent specialized in processing raw

materials for other potters. In Huayculi a partially blind man would

pound and sieve the clay for others in return for a prepared meal and

some more food to take home with him. Exactly the same arrangement

existed for a completely blind man in Charamoray, who was takento the house of the potter to

grind the temper ¡Figure 6). In

Charamoray grinding the clayusing the rocker mill is com-

monly a woman’s activity, but it

would be a serious misrepresen-tation to suggest that this man

was re-classified as a woman.

Evidently he and the com-

munity had managed to find

him a productive role.

FIGURE 5 Grinding lead for use in glaze at Charamoray; note that this uses a

flat stone ground in a circular motion. In front of the woman is the half-moon

shaped tunawa used in a rocking motion on the same maran base








267

F I G U R E 6 Blind man grinding clay in Charamoray, Department of Cuzco, Peru

TECHNIQUES AS CULTURAL METAPHORS

Many of the techniques used to prepare clay are common to other areas

of Andean technology, particularly the preparation of food. There is an

acknowledged crossover of technical know-how and terminology. In

many cases the same tools are used. What I think is more significantabout this sharing of techniques is that at a fundamental level it reflects

a particularly Andean perception of how to process materials, which

requires some things to be ground down before they can be productive.This has been explored as an idea of cultural meaning in Platt’s (1987:89-93) analysis of Bertonio’s ([1612] 1984) Aymara dictionary.lVut’uchana and llamp’uchafia can both be translated as ’to grind well’,which can be used to describe the preparation of flour, but can also be

used to describe the defeat of an enemy, who is literally ’ground downwith blows’ like flour in a mill. This concept is seen most clearly in the

term urcofia; which Bertonio ([1612J 1984) defines both as the half moon-

shaped stone used with an Andean rocker mill, and as a description for

a brave army captain. In this context it is instructive to note that pre-

Hispanic warfare did not utilize blades. The technology of warfare was

instead dependent on crushing blows and projectiles (Lechtman, 1984).However, in the Andes crushing is not just a metaphor of destruction,but is also a metaphor of enculturation and re-creation; after grindingdown, both the flour and the defeated people become productive








268

resources to be utilized by the dominant culture. Indeed, given the sug-

gestion thatone

of technology’s primary roles isto

facilitate communi-cation it is not surprising that techniques themselves should be

inherently rich in meaning. The central importance of grinding to

Andean perception is perhaps indicated by the carving of a raised border

forming a cross form6e on grinding slabs recovered at Early Horizon (c.500 Bc) Chiripa sites in the lake Titicaca basin, which Chivez (1989: 21,

Figure 6) attributes to the Yaya-Mama religious traditon. The Inkas also

positioned some of their ceremonial structures around natural rocks

with hollows utilized for pounding and grinding, e.g. the ’Mortar Group’identified by Bingham at Machu Picchu and in the centre of the shrine

of Pulpituyoc in the Cusichaca valley (Kendall, 1983: 55).

TECHNIQUES IN COMMON

We now turn more specifically to Pumpuri, in the Department of Potosi,Bolivia. Pumpuri is a community of peasant agriculturists who are also

seasonally itinerant potters that take clay prepared in their home com-

munity down to warmer valley communities, where they make and fire

their pottery in order to be able to exchange their vessels for maize and

other agricultural produce that they do not grow themselves. I wish to

compare their clay preparation to the preparation of freeze-dried pota-toes (c~M~M), which they also make.

In Pumpuri the male potters excavate five or six different clays that

must be broken up by hand and left to dry for a few hours. It is then

ground, both under foot (sarukana) and using a stone (hutana). The clayis then left exposed on communally owned flat stone platforms to dryout for two to three days. Each dry clay is taken down to the potter’shousehold where the different dried and ground clays are mixed

thoroughly before loading (still dry) into sacks that will be taken to the

valley. In the valley the dry, pulverized clay is ground more finely byrubbing between two stones, qhuna and qhuna una. This is a distinct tech-

nique from the more common use of the Andean rocker mill; here the

clay is ground between a flat base and a hand-held rubbing stone, which

is moved up and down the sloping base stone. The dried ground clay is

then heaped on a sack or animal skin and is mixed with water. The next

morning it is kneaded (tinkuchir) by hand prior to forming the vessels.

This technique of clay preparation can be compared with the tech-

nique and terminology used to describe the preparation of ch’unu, the

freeze-dried potatoes that form a major part of highland diet. The potato

crop is sorted, and the smaller varieties are used for making c/z’MMM. These

potatoes are scattered one layer deep across the flat pampa and exposedto the sun and night frosts for about three days until the potatoes have

become shrunken and shrivelled. They are then separated into small piles








269

and can be trampled to squeeze out more of the juice. Ch’ufiu can be

storedfor

upto two

years priorto

eating;it is a

highlyvalued resource

that fetches high prices, and is sometimes taken down to the valleyswhere it is exchanged for maize and other products. When preparing for

cooking, the chuilu is soaked for 12 to 24 hours, then split open by hand,after which it only needs to be boiled for a few minutes prior to eating.

There are some conceptual similarities between potatoes and miner-.

als dug out of the earth. For instance, minerals are said to be like pota-toes, which grow when fed the proper offerings lBouysse-Cassagne and

Harris, 1987: 41-2), and Cobo ([1653] 1988: 232) mentions that nuggets of

silver were referred to as papas (potatoes). What I wish to highlight here

are a few of the major elements that the processing of these, and other

materials, have in common: collecting from inside the ground, drying out,

grinding, soaking (see Table 2). In many ways this is not a very remark-

able way to prepare a pottery paste - similar methods are used through-out the world (Rice, 1987: 115-24), although the use of this method to

process vegetables and meat is, perhaps, uniquely Andean. Within the

Andean context this technology has a culturally specific significance.In many contexts dry things are considered dead. During the dry

season the earth is described as dry and white and in need of the wet rains

to revitalize it (Harris, 1982b) and the process of making ch’ufiu is sym-

bolically compared to the process of mummification of the ancestors

lallen, 1982; Arnold, 1988). In Qaqachaka dry dust is associated with the

dead, and long-dead ancestors are called laq&dquo;a achila and lag’a awilita,

meaning grandmother dust and grandfather dust (Arnold, 1988: 372).However, these dried things are also considered a potential source of ferti--

lity. Potato cultivation is used as a metaphorical idiom within which indi-

genous descent theory is described. Potatoes must be peeled because theirouter skin is considered the dried blood of ancestors and to eat it would

be a cannibalistic act (Arnold, 1988: 454). Yet from the eyes of the pota-toes that are sown new potatoes grow that are referred to as wawas (babies)(cf. Isbell, 1993) and ch’unu gives health and vitality as it is considered to

be more nutritious than fresh potatoes (Henry Stobart, pers. comm.).Gose’s (1994) analysis shows how the drying out of the dead provides the

essential waters for cultivation. In Cuzco a young woman who has sex

with an older man partially reverses this process of dessication machu

chulluchi.

The processing of clays involves removal of material from the earth

(the domain of the mountain deities, the devil and the dead ancestors).’

Clay mining is overwhelmingly done by men, partly because the mines

that the clays come from are controlled by strong masculine deities. The

mountain gods (Apus) ’own’ the flocks of grazing animals and the min-

erals inside the hillsides (Nash, 1979; Sallnow, 1989). In many com-

munities clay extraction can only be justified through the making of an








270








271

appropriate offering to these deities. In Pumpuri an offering is made to

theclay

mines on the first of

August,in

Raqchithe

clay mines, tempersources, patio work area and pottery markets are specifically mentioned

during the offering made on the night of San Luis (24/25 August).HernAndez Principe’s account of 1622 described the offerings made bythe community of Recuay (Olleros), which consisted of two groups of

potters who made two capac huchas (human sacrifices) of children each

year by sealing them alive within deep-shaft tombs in order to ensure

good clay for their pottery (Zuidema, 1989: 130-5, 149-50).In both Pumpuri and Raqchi the mined clay must always be ’fresh’

and care is taken not to collect the dried clay on the surface, which is

lighter in colour than the deeper (damp) clay and is considered inappro-priate. But once the clay has been mined it must be dried out thoroughly,prior to being ground down. Only then can the dry clay be made pro-

ductive, by mixing it with water. This is perhaps seen most explicitly inthe use of the word tinkuchir to describe the final kneading of the clay.Tinku means the coming together and mixing of two things but is nor-

mally used in coritexts where that mixing is a productive, but often

violent, combining of them (e.g. where two canals come together, the

marking and mating of animals, or the battle between two communities

that is thought to bring fertility to the crops).

GENDER AND TECHNIQUES FOR SHAPING SOCIETY

Ideas About what is appropriate work for different genders and ages

helps to shape social organization and the material organization of these

activities (e.g. temporal and spatial separation of tasks). Differences in

male and female roles in pottery production are a part of the wider dif-ferentiation of such work roles. The choice of who performs particularactivities and learns the necessary skills is largely made through local

perceptions of appropriate action using the participants’ age and genderas principles around which productive work is divided. Gendered activi-

ties are a perceived division of labour and not simply a lack of know-

ledge. But, because gender associations affects the learning of skills and

thus the mastery of certain motor habits (Mauss, 1979), certain actions

may be physically as well as socially awkward. (I am slowly learninghow to do the ironing, but I find it almost impossible to carry a large potof liquid on my back and usually hoist it up on to my shoulder, much to

the surprise and amusement of friends in the Andes.)We should not be trapped into too rigid a conception of how gender

structures material practice. Although the same principle of gendercomplementarity (ghariwarmi~ is expressed by households in most com-

munities, the particulars of how a gendered division of labour is enacted

varies. Even where society is idealized as a highly gendered construct








272

there remains a degree of flexibility in the organization of material

practice. As the

exampleof the blind men

highlights,the household and

the community will search for productive roles appropriate to each

person’s abilities. This is as important to an individual’s identity as is

gender. It is precisely because gender is considered such a fundamental

aspect of society, and is expressed through so many areas (productiveactivities, ritual roles, clothing, kinship and inheritance), that some ’cul-

tural norms’ can be transgressedwithout threatening the perception of theindividual’s gender. In the longer term the social construction of such

gender roles also helps to shape the direction of social and technical

change.The gendering of activities is partly related to people’s cosmology.

Because the mountain deities are conceived of as masculine and particu-larly dangerous for women, men are the appropriate miners of clay,

whereas the fertile earth, Pachamama, is female and thus it is commonlywomen who plant seeds. But it would be wrong to see such ideologicalunderstanding as the primary source of meaning. It is also in the very

practice of activities that such cosmologies are conceived and reproduced;it is just as true to say that because men mine and go over the mountains

on trading trips that the mountains are commonly considered to be male.

TECHNOLOGY AS PHILOSOPHY

Techniques develop alongside cultural principles. The conceptual under-

standing of the productive quality of drying things out and grinding themdown cross-cuts several different technologies, and is drawn upon as a

means of describing social relations (such as the nature of death or con-

quest).Heather Lechtman (1979, 1984) has made a similar argument in con-

nection with the development of pre-Hispanic Andean metallurgywherea process of surface depletion of metal alloys was used to produce goldor silver surfaces. Lechtman suggests that the reason for using tumbaga

(a metal alloy consisting mainly of copper with a small proportion of goldand silver in it) was because for the object to have meaning within

Andean understanding its outer appearance must reflect some of its

inner essence: ’that which appears superficially to be true of it, must

also be inside it’ (Lechtman, 1984: 30) - therefore gold plating would be

inappropriate. Lechtman justifies this interpretation with reference to

Andean weaving technology, which appears to incorporate the same

ideal, that the superficial message of the cloth must be inherent in the

very structure of its construction - to remove the design requires the

cloth to be unravelled and destroyed, unlike techniques that involve

embroidery or painting on the cloth. She also draws attention to the

Quechua term hamay, which can be used to describe the act of infusing








273

life spirit into inanimate objects. This is the term most commonly used

to describe how the Inka creator god Viraqocha animated objects bybreathing spirit into them. ’Perhaps the notions of &dquo;technologicalessence&dquo; - of the visually apprehended aspect of an object revealing its

inner structure - are related to these fundamental Andean concepts of

the divine animation of all material things’ (Lechtman 1984: 33).It is possible that in the past the choice of micaceous clays and the

burnishing of pots was understood in similar terms to those suggestedby Lechtman for metal technology. Sara Lunt (1988: 493) has commented

that the mica that twinkles on the surface of Inka pottery results from

’the polishing of the pot’s surface and the consequent flattening bf the

mica grains so that they present their shiny surfaces to the eye’. While

Dean Arnold (1993: 208) has criticized pottery analysts for referring to

mica as a tempering material when it was probably an inclusion in the

claycollected

bythe

potters,he also comments

(1993: 113)that

pottersdo preferentially choose clays with the ’gold-like’ particles of mica.

Several authors (e.g. Arnold, 1988; Crickmay, 1993) describe how the

terminology and cosmology associated with weaving cross-cuts with that

of agriculture, building construction and kinship. This cross-cuttingframework of technical understanding and cosmology will affect the

direction of technical change, as it is drawn upon when people are con-

fronted by technical and social problems. Indeed, the development of

the quipu (the knotted coloured strings used as the major Inka device for

record keeping) was presumably possible because weavings had such

rich meaning within Andean society due to their use as a major vehicle

for communicating status, kinship ties, cosmologies and reciprocalrelations. In this context it was perhaps natural to look to thread and

cloth rather than painting or inscription when developing a system ofnotation. Similarly Andean woodwork did not develop in the same direc-

tions as Western carpentry. Western perceptions might explain this

’deficiency’ as due to Andean people’s lacking the use of the saw as a

tool. However, it would be more accurate to explain that woodworkingwas conceived of within local traditions of weaving rather than Western

approaches to usingjoints, glue or nails. Andeanwooden structures were

constructed by drawing upon the repertoire of Andeanweaving and bas-

ketry techniques to tie and bind wood together by twining cord around

it, a cultural perception that had an enormously wide-ranging influence

on tree husbandry, tool construction, building techniques and aesthetics.

Van der Leeuw et al. (1991) have suggested that in Mexico the

Michoacan potters’ conceptualization of how to make a pot using a

mould is constrained by their perception that the surface that eventu-

ally forms the exterior of the vessel should always be formed againstthe inner surface of the mould. The importance of this insight is that it

helps to explain the potters ’unquestioned assumptions’, which, the








274

authors argue, are actually what shape the continuity and direction of

change within this technical tradition. I would describe such technical

understanding not so much ’unquestioned’ as a kind of philosophy that

informs many aspects of the tradition. The understanding that turningin a clockwise direction or moving from left to right is a constructive

and progressive ideal is, perhaps, a similar philosophy that underpinsmany western technical choices. This informs not just the making of

clocks, but also long-playing records, the form of screws, the stirring of

tea and competitive track running - not least because our motor habits

are already shaped by this ideology. When designing a music systemwith the volume increasing from left to right, or by turning the knob in

a clockwise direction, we do not consider this as an ideological con-

struct, yet it has been informed by centuries of such deep meaning rein-

forced by daily practices such as reading. Perhaps this is best illustrated

in our

conventional depictionof evolution as a line of

people evolvingas they progress from left to right. In the example of desiccation and

grinding, the nature of death is partly understood through metaphorsdrawn from material practice, and this way of understanding death, and

the dead, in turn influences what is considered appropriate technology.Thus a web of interrelationships is set up between ideology, social

relations and material practice. It is precisely this embeddedness of

technological understanding that facilitates the reproduction of cultural

knowledge.

CULTURAL PERCEPTION AND THE DIRECTION OF

TECHNICAL CHANGE

The use of settling tanks to sort and process clay has not been adoptedin many Andean communities, but this is not to say that such techniquescannot be adopted. People are not shackled by their ideology. One Huay-culi potter, who has tried using slip-casting techniques for potterymaking, did prepare his clay by making it into a slurry and then allow-

ing it to settle before separating off the finer fraction of clay. Althoughhe considered the method effective, it was time-consuming and requireda lot of extra equipment so that, for the moment, he has returned to

pounding his clay and making pottery on a wheel. However, settlingtanks are used to process clay in some households making slip-castpottery in Pucara, and it is also used in the government-sponsoredartisan centre in Quinoa (Arnold, 1993: 108-12). It would have been

possible to change clay processing techniques to the use of settling tanks

by drawing on techniques and material culture used when making beerin the Andes (Sillar, 1994), and it is, I think, significant that in Huayculiand Quinoa the large jars used to prepare beer have been reused for this

form of clay processing.








275

In all these instances where settling tanks have been tried out this

has been related to the introduction of newforming techniques due

to

the active encouragement of external agencies. Like the introduction of

kilns in Charamoray and previously the introduction of wheel-made

pottery to South America, these techniques have been championed (evan-gelized ?) by people who are familiar with them and believe in the supe-

riority of their technology. It is the way that technology is ’represented’within a culture that is fundamental to how it is conceived of and whether

or not it will be adopted (Latour, 1993; Lemonnier, 1993). I have only nig-gling doubts about the benefits of bringing electricity, tap water and

toilets to Andean communities. After all, these are some of the aspects of

my culture that I have been taught to value highly, as is expressed in innu-

merable metaphors concerning light and sanitation. Indeed the search for

and development of porcelain and white-wear pottery in Europe during

the 18th century may be better understood within the context of develop-ing concepts of purity and cleanliness in European society. At a some-

what smaller scale we can think of the disputes that many businesses and

academic institutions have got involved in as different factions supportthe computer systems and software packages that they are used to and

believe to be superior. Similarly the Inka state mobilized people to con-

struct terraces and irrigation systems. The fine Inka stonework associated

with these agricultural improvements served as a visible marker of the

state’s presence; so much so that many fine masonry blocks appear to

have been hacked apart at Tomebamba, the newly established Inka

capital that was destroyed during the civil war immediately before the

Spanish conquest (Hyslop, 1993: 346). We might also think of the Lud-

dites breaking up mechanical looms and sewing machines because theysaw them taking away their livelihood and their social position. The waythat a technology is ’represented’ within a culture is fundamental to how

it is conceived of, which innovations are considered possible or unaccept-able by certain parts of the society, and whether or not it is considered

.desirable to ’evangelize’ a particular technology amongst other popu-

lations. For the same reason some innovations that may now seem

’obvious’ because of their functional or utilitarian advantages were not

always adopted rapidly in the past. For instance, during the Late Bronze

Age in Scandinavia iron was used as inlay and for razors or tweezers, but

it only made a very minimal impact and was not included in the largeritual deposits of bronze. This apparent ignorance of the functional advan-

tages of iron over bronze was because iron was not considered appropri-ate (desirable) when the main use of metal was as a decorative element

to express gender and status (Sorenson, 1989).Both ovens and kilns appear to have been Spanish introductions to

the Andes. Prior to the Spanish Conquest cooking in the Andes was

largely done in pots or by using hot stones (wafiya), and pottery was








276

fired in open bonfires. But in the West heating up a covered chamber,such as an oven, was a

techniqueused for

cooking, pottery firingand,

to some extent, the heating of buildings. Indeed there is an acknow-

ledged crossover between these technologies in that the first-firing of

pottery is termed a ’biscuit firing’. The cultural significance of this tech-

nology can partly be seen when we describe someone eccentric as ’half-

baked’, or someone who is pregnant as having a ’bun in the oven’. This

contrasts with the metaphors that are used in the Andes, where a

cooking pot or a toasting pan can be equated with the womb. A preg-nant woman can be told not to heat her toasting pot too much or the

placenta will stick to the wall of her womb (Gifford and Hoggarth, 1976:

60), pregnant mothers are told not to place their spoon across the mouth

of the cooking pot or the baby’s arms will be outstretched and the birth

will be difficult (Vokral, 1991: 247) and, if there is a miscarriage, the

baby is said to have been ’overcooked’ in the womb (Lynn Sikkink, pers.comm.). To some extent the significance of ovens relates to the import-ance of bread in Western European diets, not least because of bread’s

important symbolism in Christianity. So it is not surprising that much

of the land initially acquired by the Spanish was used to grow wheat,and bread ovens were rapidly introduced after the conquest. Also in

areas where the Spanish set up pottery manufacture (partly to make

large jars for wine storage) they constructed kilns for the purpose.

Spanish ideology conceptualized their technologies as superior, not least

because each technology was embedded in a network of cultural mean-

ings that bound a wide range of techniques and consumption patternstogether.

The choice of raw materials, tools and techniques used in artefact

production are frequently made precisely because they are alreadyimbued with cultural significance. For instance for the Inkas gold had

very deep cosmological significance, being linked to the sun god Inti, and

clay is conceived of as coming from the ancestors or mountain deities.

In India the Hindu potters, unlike Muslims, refuse to use donkey dungto temper their clay as they consider it to be impure (Saraswati and

Behura, 1966). Why did British Neolithic and Bronze Age potters utilize

flint as a temper? This material needs to be heated in a fire to break it

up and then pounded or crushed in some way; to a present-day potter’smind it makes the pottery fabric awkward to use. Surely there was some-

thing in the way that flint was understood or ’represented’ that made it

seem appropriate to use in this way. Changes in pottery forms and fabrics

over time may be better explained if we consider how the techniquesutilized in their production and use were ’represented’ in the past, ratherthan assuming that pottery has been constantly improving its function-

ality as it headed up the evolutionary conveyor-belt to Spode or Wedg-wood.








277

STOREHOUSES FOR THE DEAD

Technological developments are best understood within the social settingfrom which they emerged. In the final part of this paper I suggest that

the storage systems used by the Inka developed out of a burial techniquethat had emerged in the preceding period. This suggestion is made more

likely precisely because it accounts for a number of shared meaningsbetween the stored crops and the dead ancestors. Indeed, I think that

this novel form of storage was made possible because the cultural

meaning of the technique was appropriate within its new application.Inka Storage structures (qollqas) occur throughout the area con-

quered and controlled by the Inka. ’Ordinarily these storehouses or

warehouses were built outside of town on a high, cool and windy placenear the royal road. The Indians put these storehouses in high places so

that what was stored in them would be kept from getting wet and humidand from spoiling in any way’ (Cobo, [1653] 1988: 218-19; cf. LeVine,

1992). The dry highland air currents that moved through the storagestructures on these hillside locations kept the goods cool and dry (par-ticularly important for potatoes, which are notoriously difficult to store)but the thick walls and roofs of the qollqas prevented driving rains from

entering and spoiling the goods (Morris, 1992; Protzen, 1993). The main

role of the stores was to equip and feed large groups working on state

projects of agricultural production, construction and military expansion.From documentary evidence it seems that the qollqas would have been

used for the storage of staple foods (maize, potatoes, ch’unu, quinoa,ch’arki, etc.) as well as the storage of non-foodstuffs (agricultural tools,

weavings, armaments, minerals, metals, wool, cloth, pottery, feathers,

etc.). At Huanoco Pampa (Morris and Thompson, 1985) and in the Xauxa

region (D’Altroy and Hastorf, 1984) the archaeological evidence mainlypoints to the storage of food produce, and Morris (1992: xi) has suggestedthat this may be true of most centres with the possible exception of the

Inka capital of Cuzco itself.

It was commonly assumed that such state storage was also a feature

of the previous Wari and Tiwanaku empires, but recent excavations at

some of the main contenders for large-scale state storage during this

period, such as at Pikillaqta (McEwan, 1991) and Azingaro (Anders,1991) have shown that the battery of cell-like blocks in walled com-

pounds at these sites were used for domestic activities. At the major sites

of Tiwanaku and Wari themselves the excavators have not interpretedany buildings as having a purely storage function, although rather

modest storage pits have been found (Kolata, 1993).This poses a problem. Conventional wisdom suggests that Wari (if not

Tiwanaku) was some kind of Andean state, and that such states must be

able to store large volumes of material to support the state bureaucracy








278

and facilitate the redistribution of goods extracted from a diverse range

of ecological zones. Thereseem

to be three possible conclusions: (a) Wariwas not a state; (b) We haven’t found the storage systems they used yet;or (c) It’s a state, Jim, but not as we know it! It may be that in presum-

ing the large-scale manipulation of stores as a necessary prerequisite of

early states (largely drawing upon Polanyi’s (1957) redistribution model)we are effectively putting the cart before the horse. Manipulation of large-scale storage may be a later embellishment of state-level organizationrather than a precursor of it. This may also be true of early Aegean civiliz-

ation. Strasser (1995) has recently argued that the storage potential at

Early and Middle Bronze Age sites, particularly the Minoan Palaces on

Crete, has been vastly over-emphasized. Strasser suggest that the so-called

’grain silos’ could not have functioned as such precisely because theywere too big and too damp to be effective. Even the battery of large pots

lined up in the so-called ’store rooms’ that visitors see at Knossos todaywere in fact collected together by Arthur Evans from a variety of locations

and periods (Hitchcock, 1995).It is possible that the Inka took their idea of storage from the coast,

where there is evidence of large-scale storage from earlier periods(Anders, 1981), particularly the storage systems of the contemporaryChimu (Day, 1982). According to the history of the Inkas recorded after

the Spanish invasion, Pachacutec Inka constructed the first large-scalestorage in Cuzco shortly after the Chanca war (Rostworoski, 1976); if this

were correct it would be well in advance of the Inka conquest of the

Chimu. The survey and dating of sites in the Cuzco region is, as yet, too

inadequate to be certain about which storage structures predate the Inka

expansion beyond Cuzco and the sacred valley (cf. Huaycochea Nunez

de la Torre, 1994). However, even if the idea of state storage was bor-rowed from the Chimu, this still leaves a problem as the technique of

storage seen in the form and exposed position of the Inka qollqas is verydifferent to that of the high-walled enclosures seen at the Chimu sites of

Chan Chan. The evidence for pre-Inka storage in the highlands is limited

to possible storage in the upper floor (marka) or subsidiary buildings of

household compounds and pits.Pits may well have been used for the domestic storage of seeds

throughout much of Andean prehistory. Pits of various sizes are found

within households and patios of all periods, many of them being reused

as burial sites. Today in Ayllu Macha, Northern Potosi, pits are dug out

shortly after the harvest; these are lined with grass [ichhuJ, filled with

seed potatoes and covered with soil until they are reopened some five

or so months later at the time of sowing, before the heaviest rains. After

pits have been emptied they may be back-filled if they are in an

awkward position (for instance in Pumpuri one storage pit [q&dquo;ayru]located in an animal corral was back-filled when the rains started,








279

although not until after a young lamb had drowned in it) or they may

be left open until they are next needed. In good years several pits maybe needed, but in years of poor harvest, or when the household has

access to less labour or land, then one pit may be sufficient. If this

occurs for a few years old pits may become forgotten or reused for

rubbish disposal.For the immediately pre-Inka era (referred to as the Late Inter-

mediate Period, LIP) there is no evidence for large-scale storage any-where in the highlands (Parsons and Hastings, 1988: 210). This period is

thought to be one of instability and inter-group warfare, an assumptionlargely based on the relocation of settlements to more defensive hilltoplocations. This move to hilltop locations characterizes a large area of the

Andean Highlands and it is, I think, significant that a new burial tra-

dition that emerges during this period also spreads throughout much of

the highlands.Chullpas are circular or square burial towers normally built out of

stone, although within what is now modern Bolivia many altiplano chull-

pas are built with adobe (Figures 7, 8 and 9). Due to their continuingimportance to local groups and to the fact that the majority of them have

been looted, archaeologists have not studied them as fully as they wouldlike to; however, those that have been investigated seem to date to the

LIP or later (e.g. Hyslop, 1977; Revista Pumapunku, 1993). Throughoutmost of the South-Central Andes these structures are built on hilltop or

hillside locations, and indeed many of them are within the LIP settle-

ments themselves. This change in burial practice must represent a sig-nificant change in the understanding of the dead and attitudes to them.

While the move of settlements on to rocky ridge-top locations may have

made it more difficult to dig pits, this is not in itself sufficient explanationfor such a radical change. Indeed, at most LIP and later sites we con-

tinue to find pit burials within settlements. Either the chullpas representa burial technique afforded to only a small (elite?) section of the com-

munity or they are an intermediate location for most of the dead, whowill eventually be buried. It is possible that the chullpas are using the

house structure itself as their model since many chullpas are smaller

than, but similar in construction techniques to, contemporary houses -

the dead being given their own households within the living settlement.

Whatever the initial cause this is only part of a long process of changingattitude to the dead with a wide diversification in burial methods (e.g.in caves, rock shelters and cliffside tombs). Within the chullpas the dead

were positioned above ground so that their bodies were preserved and

became dried-out mummies. Chullpas may have played an important role

in the emergence of the elaborate ’necropomp’ which the Spanishencountered on their arrival in the Andes, where the mummified bodies

of the elite dead were paraded, offered food and drink, and, through the








280

FIGURES 7 (ABOVE) AND 8 (BELOW) Chullpas at Sillustani, Department of

Puno, Peru

intercession and interpretation of the living, played an active role in the

organization of society (Cobo, tl6531 1990; Guaman Poma, [1584-1615J1988; Sillar, 1992; Zuidema, 1989).








281

F I G U R E 9 A somewhat idealized reconstruction of the interior of an Aymarachullpa from a drawing by Paul Marcoy (1875: 68) showing the circle of

mummies that were preserved inside

Towards the end of the LIP and during the following Inka periodmost settlements moved away from the more defensible hilltop locationsback on to flatter valley lands, a process that appears to have got

underway earlier in the Cuzco region than most other parts of the South-

Central Andes (Bauer, 1992; Kendall et al., 1992). Some of the Late

Horizon dead continued to be placed in hill-side chullpas (e.g. Hyslop,1977), frequently accompanied by Inka-style pottery and other grave

goods. This is the period when the Inka qollqa storage structures are

developed. Like the chullpas these are square and round stone-built struc-

tures that are positioned on hillside locations. It seems to me that the

qollqas are drawing upon the form and function of the chullpas, using thesame idea of hillside location and limited air flow to preserve their con-

tents. Indeed it is quite possible that the Inka state qollqas are the elab-

oration of a domestic storage technique that developed during the LIP.

When investigating LIP sites at Juli, on Lake Titicaca, investigators foundit difficult to distinguish between houses, chullpas and possible qollqas(Stanish et al., 1993: 87). Similarly, in the Mantaro valley it has been sug-

gested that within the house compounds of LIP hilltop settlements some








282

of the structures may have been used for storage (Earle et al., 1988). If

the Inka

qollqasare an elaboration of a

previously existingdomestic form

of storage it is, as yet, only when they are built in a regimented form

and are located outside contemporary settlements that we can be certain

of identifying them.

The qollqas and the chullpas share a common technical function to

store and preserve their contents. They also shared some cosmologicalsignificance. The conceptual link between the dead and storage of seeds

may originate earlier, as witnessed by the use of pits as burial places,and it continues in present-day cosmologies of the Andes. For instance,Sallnow (1987: 128) records the digging up of fathers’ or grandfathers’skulls, which are kept in domestic storerooms to be decorated with

flowers and have chicha poured through their jaws during Todos Santos.

Today the connection of the dead to fertility is partly located in the

timing of this festival for the dead. Todos Santos is celebrated at the begin-ning of November, after the start of the planting and just as the rains are

beginning. Rain falling the few days before Todos Santos is said to be the

tears of the dead children (Andrew Orta, pers. comm.). Harris (1982)notes that the dead who return to the community during Todos Santos

do not leave until the February Carnival, which marks the end of the

rainy season and the celebration of the harvest; thus the dead are presentas the crops grow, but absent during the period when the seed is stored.

As the mummified dead of the Inka were moved around the landscapeit is possible that they were only placed in the chullpas at particularseasons of the year, much as crosses are taken from the churches to

shrines within the field systems today. These mummies are called mallki

in Quechua, the same word being used for a tree sapling, again reiter-

ating the conceptual link between the dead and regenerative growth ofseed crops. Today chullpas are referred to as the houses of the Machu,the somewhat ambivalent pre-Christian dead. The malevolent wind from

these burial places (Machu wayra) can cause sickness, and if a woman

dreams of the Machu she will bear his deformed child. Nevertheless, at

night the Machu cultivate the fields and help the potatoes to grow, and

although the Machu wayra causes sickness and death for people, it is

thought to be wanu (fertilizer) for the fields (Allen, 1988: 56).Ifmy understanding is correct the technological innovation of qollqa

storage was inspired by the experience of the chullpas, but this is not justthe transfer of a technique between two entirely separate spheres of

activity. The pre-existing link between the dead and storage would have

made the transfer of the technique conceptually possible and, in makingthe link, the qollqas would have acquired some of the meanings of

regeneration and reciprocity with the ancestors that the chullpasexpressed. Both the qollqas and the chullpas represent a bond between

the people and the land, a continuing commitment to plough, to sow, to








283

fertilize and to offer some of the harvest in sacrifice. In using the ’lan-

guage’of the chullpas, which were such a widespread phenomena

through the Andes during the LIP, the Inkas may also have made their

extraction of produce from the local population more acceptable. The

qollqas are a visible statement of Inka commitment, a reciprocal bond

between the local community and the Inka state. The location of the

qollqas outside the confines of ~ the main settlement may reflect the

ambiguous ownership of the stores by both the Inka and the local popu-

lation. This is a surprising conclusion to draw about installations put upunder state control, but it would help to explain why the storage systemin the Mantaro valley continued to function for some 20 or so years after

the execution of Atahullpa, with local leaders supplying the Spanisharmy fighting the Inka (D’Altroy and Earle, 1992a)...

CONCLUSIONS

Techniques cannot be understood if they are viewed purely in terms of

mechanical actions applied to material objects. Every technique is used

in a cultural setting that affects the way it is understood in that society.Who performs the technique? What tools do they use? Where and when

is the technique applied?What is the intended purpose? All of these ques-tions affect how the technique is socially constituted (Dobres, 1995) and

how the technique itself becomes bound up with associations that affect

how it is represented by society. For this reason technical traditions are

fully embedded within their cultural and historical contexts. Like those

described previously, many techniques cross over between several differ-

ent spheres of activity and this affects how they become imbued with cul-

turally specific meanings. Techniques of processing materials are even

used as metaphors through which people describe social relations. For

instance, I have described how warfare and death are partly understood

through metaphors drawn from material practices (cf. Tarlow, 1995).Furthermore, this way of understanding death, and the dead, may itself

help to construct what is considered appropriate technology and who is

considered fit to perform various activities. These culturally specificmeanings affect the direction of both technical and social change.

By studying techniques as cultural choices that are embedded in

local perceptions we release technical studies from the ahistoric appli-cation of Western functionalist assumptions. This does not mean denyingthat there are universal aspects to the physical, chemical and mechani-

cal properties of a given material. Nonetheless, the way that these prop-

erties are understood and the applications that it is consideredappropriate, or acceptable, to put them to are not universal. Within

recent Western science this is perhaps clearest in the history and

development of reproductive technologies, but the work of Lemonnier








284

(1992) and Latour (1993), amongst others, serves to illustrate to what

extent our own technical choices have been shapedby

cultural percep-tions and local representations of techniques. The uses of raw materials,tools and techniques are always socially informed choices that draw

upon long historical traditions. When confronted by new problems it is

to this cultural knowledge that people turn to in a creative process where

concepts, materials, tools and techniques are constantly reworked in the

bricolage that is the life force of cultures. By critically considering this,material culture studies can deepen our comprehension of that fasci-

nating interdependence between the material world and cultural under-

standing.

Acknowledgements .

This paper draws upon ethnographic fieldwork carried out in the Department of

Cuzco, Peru, and the Departments of Cochabamba and Potosi, Bolivia. That work

has been reported more fully inmy doctoral thesis (Sillar, 1994), which was super-vised by Sander van der Leeuw at the Department of Archaeology, University of

Cambridge. This research would not have been possible without financial supportfrom the following: Fitzwilliam Trust Research Fund, Cambridge University(1990, 1991); The Anthony Wilkin Fund, Cambridge University (1991); Crowther-

Beynon Fund, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge University(1990, 1991). I have received permission to carry out my research, essential letters

of introduction and support from the Instituto Nacional de Cultura’s offices in

Lima and Cuzco and the Museo Nacional de Etnografia y Folklore in La Paz. Byfar my largest debt is owed to the communities in Peru and Bolivia who permit-ted me to live amongst them, who fed me, and gently educated me by allowingme to participate in their activities and answering thousands of questions that

constantly betrayed my ignorance. This paper combines the contents of two

papers first presented at the Theoretical Archaeology Group Conference, ’Making

Culture Material: Ceramic Technology as Cultural Ideology’, in 1994 and ’IfYou’ve Got It Flaunt It! Discrete Pits and Prestigious Storehouses in the Andes’,in 1995. Finally I would like to acknowledge the enormous contribution that dis-

cussions with Nathan Schlanger and Sarah Tarlow, as well as comments on this

paper from Mike Shanks and an anonymous reviewer, have had on this work.

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BILL SILLAR is a research fellow at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He

has worked on archaeological projects in both Europe and South America. His

PhD (1994), from the Department of Archaeology, Cambridge University, exam-

ined the role of present-day pottery production, trade and use in Peru and Bolivia

with particular reference to: household organization and identity; the interrela-

tionship between ’traditional’ exchange practices and capitalist economics; and

material culture’s role in social reproduction. He is currently researching the

origin and development of Inca pottery in Cuzco. Address: Department of

Archaeology, University of Wales, Lampeter, Dyfed SA48 7ED, UK. [email:

snØ[email protected]]

sillar (inglés)

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