Estudios Latinoamericanos

In Memoriam: Andrzej T. Antczak, an Archaeologist Who Loved Venezuela

Michal Gilewski — 2024-08-08

On February 28, 2024, Andrzej T. Antczak passed away. He was an archaeologist specializing in Northern South America and the Southeastern Caribbean and was considered one of the most important contemporary European archaeologists working in Latin America.

The Shape of Water

Dorota Bojkowska — 2024-08-10

The quatrefoil motif, a widespread symbol in ancient Mesoamerica, is associated with caves and serves as a portal to the supernatural world, enabling communication with gods and ancestors. This article investigates the undeciphered Maya logogram T510cd, commonly referred to as the quatrefoil glyph due to its distinctive shape. Through a comprehensive analysis of inscriptions featuring T510cd, complemented by selected iconographic, archaeological, and ethnographic investigations, this article sheds new light on previous attempts to decipher the quatrefoil glyph. The study reveals that logogram T510cd likely represents the Maya word "ch’en," signifying openings or holes in the earth, often indirectly related to pools and caves.

Mauricio Amster: A Pole in the Service of Spanish-Language Book Culture. Interpretative Proposals

Marcin Kurek — 2024-05-15

The goal of the article is to evoke the figure of Mauricio Amster (1907-1980), a Polish graphic designer, typographer, book designer, magazine and poster designer, born in Lviv, educated at a design school in Berlin, who, active in Spain and especially in Chile, established the foundations of modern book culture in both countries. The article proposes to explore Amster's work through the concept of "shifter," examining how his "book-objects" function as symbolic and indexical signs that combine autonomous art and mass production, and how these elements intertwine within the context of post-vanguardism and the society of the era.

The Social Position of Children in Southern Peru During the Late Intermediate Period. Study of Mummies from San Francisco Site, Yauca Valley.

Dagmara Socha — 2024-05-15

The aim of the current paper is to investigate of the role of the children in prehispanic society from the perspective of human remains from the site of San Francisco (Yauca Valley) on the southern Peru coast dating to the Late Intermediate Period (900-1476 AC). The bioarchaeological analysis of the quality of bundle textiles, health condition, body position, the artificial head modification, and mummification techniques were used to establish if the subadults received a different treatment related to their social origins or age. A radiographic and anthropological examination was conducted to investigate 22 wrapped mummies. The result show three different types of artificial cranial modification, as well as trace of artificial mummification practices. The children (including infants) participated in the same funerary treatment as adults. The results suggest an identification with the group started at the moment of birth. The diversity of the youngest children showed a complex social structure in which social status was inherited from the parents.

Las quilcas de Pacchana o Illomas, Arequipa, Perú.

Gori-Tumi Echevarría-López — 2023-12-30

Paccahana or Illomas, located in the province of Condesuyos, Arequipa, is one of the most important quilca sites in Arequipa, with hundreds of rocks marked with motifs and figures, which express a great graphic richness and are evidence of a strong social interaction in the area. Due to this remarkable figurative quality, very characteristic of the Yunga region of the Andes, the study set out to examine the sequence and chronology of the site, for which a macroscopic visual analysis methodology was proposed, based on culturalist and graphic-formal analytical premises.

The results exposed a long sequence of nine phases of quilca production, related to three major periods, which developed mainly during the Early Horizon Period. It is concluded that these quilcas expose a tradition of figurative production made by social groups with varied behavioral premises, and with relations with the Siguas 1 culture of Arequipa, and to a lesser extent with the Paracas civilization of Ica.

SPECIAL ISSUE „INCA NEWS" Editors’ Preface

Viviana Moscovich — 2024-08-08

Editors’ Preface

The Inca Philosophy of 10

Viviana Moscovich — 2024-08-08

In his Gramática y arte nueva de la lengua general o lengua del Inca, Gonçalez Holguín ([1607] 1842:217) describes the unique Quechua arithmetical system and presents the names of the numbers in Quechua in a decisively decimal outline, beginning in ‘1’ and finishing in the ‘infinite’—that is, a list of positive integers (Z+) that does not include ‘zero.’

In his list, each numeral in Quechua appears with its translation into Spanish and a representation in western Indo-Arabic numerals. However, even though the systems would be seemingly identical (i.e., decimal), the representation of Quechua numerals in Western ones reveals, in fact, an essential cultural discrepancy, as the graphic representations of the Western numerals, from 0 to 9, and their combinations used to construct numbers higher than 10, did not exist in Inca culture, and their decimal system, as will be shown below, was based on utterly different concepts, structures and visualization means.

Among these concepts, the ‘count by 10’ and powers of ten, building on other basic concepts (such as hanan-hurin, for example), turns out to be an inherent element of Inca thought applied by these to structure and manage the Tawantinsuyu’s[1] territory and society.

[1] Tawantinsuyu is the original Inca name of the so-called ‘Inca Empire.’

Living Conditions and Death of Pre-Columbian Central Andean Women: Evidence from CT-based 3d reconstructions of Chancay funerary bundles

Lucia Watson — 2024-08-08

Th is work focuses on the role of women in ancient Peru during its Late Period (AD 1100–1532). It studies
101 funerary bundles from the Chancay Necropolis of Miramar in Ancon in order to reconstruct the
life conditions, activities, and social organization of the local population. It integrates three previously
unpublished sources: notes from the opening of the bundles from the National Museum of Archaeology,
Anthropology and History of Peru (MNAAHP) in the 1950s; the direct observation of bundles at the Site
Museum of Ancon; and the bundles’ CT-based 3D reconstructions.
Th e contribution of this research is twofold: it is not only methodological, since it integrates diff erent sources, rescuing museum collections usually left aside due to their lack of contextual information; it is also
one of the fi rst gender-focused bioarchaeological studies in the Andes, a chance to rethink the position that
women played in political and economic tiers of the past.

Ideological and cultural continuities between the ancient Tiwanaku and the ancient Inca Empire

Martti Pärssinen — 2024-08-08

The extent to which the Inca Empire was built on knowledge, experiences, and ideology inherited from one or both of its Middle Horizon predecessors – the Tiwanaku and the Wari States – is a long-debated topic in Andean studies. In this article, we review the relevant discussions regarding ceramics, architectural styles, iconographical patterns, radiocarbon dating, and historical sources. We then proceed to discuss the new insights, especially into the Tiwanaku-Inca continuity issue, that our own archaeological research in the Lake Titicaca area offers. On the one hand, even though the Tiwanaku State probably collapsed around AD 1000, its legacy continued in ceramic iconography until the 13th century AD in the Lake Titicaca area, in Northern Chile, and in Southern Peru, probably indicating some ideological continuity as well. On the other hand, even though the traditional chronology of the Inca expansion, established by John H. Rowe, argues for a very late expansion into the southern part of the Empire (that is, for expansion after AD 1471), mounting radiocarbon (and thermoluminescence) evidence firmly indicates that Inca-style ceramics and architecture were already present in the Lake Titicaca area in the 14th century AD. Even though many kinds of changes undoubtedly occurred, especially ca. AD 1250–1350, iconographical and ideological continuity, as well as a trajectory of similar architectural developments, can be established from the Tiwanaku to the Inca in the Lake Titicaca area (and probably also in southern Peru, northern Chile, and northwestern Argentina). Thus, our results challenge the dominant Cuzco-centered view of the early political and ideological development of the Inca Empire.