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Las Varas - Ritual and Ethnicity in the Ancient Andes (Hardcover, New edition)
Loot Price: R1,260
Discovery Miles 12 600
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Las Varas - Ritual and Ethnicity in the Ancient Andes (Hardcover, New edition)
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Archaeological data from Las Varas, Peru, that establish the
importance of ritual in constructing ethnic boundaries. Recent
popular discourse on nationalism and ethnicity assumes that humans
by nature prefer 'tribalism,' as though people cannot help but
divide themselves along lines of social and ethnic differences.
Research from anthropology, history, and archaeology, however,
shows that individuals actively construct cultural and social
ideologies to fabricate the stereotypes, myths, and beliefs that
separate 'us' from 'them.' Archaeologist Howard Tsai and his team
uncovered a thousand-year-old village, Las Varas, in northern Peru
where the inhabitants performed rituals to recognize and reinforce
ethnic identities. Las Varas is located near the coast in a valley
leading into the Andes. Excavations revealed a western entrance to
the village for those arriving from the coast and an eastern entry
point for those coming from the highlands. Rituals were performed
at both of these entrances, indicating that the community was open
to exchange and interaction, yet at the same time controlled the
flow of people and goods through ceremonial protocols. Using these
checkpoints and associated rituals, the villagers of Las Varas were
able to maintain ethnic differences between themselves and visitors
from foreign lands. Las Varas: Ritual and Ethnicity in the Ancient
Andes reveals a rare case of finding ethnicity by relying solely on
archaeological remains. Tsai analyzes data from the excavation of
Las Varas within a theoretical framework based on current
understandings of ethnicity. He demonstrates the potential for
archaeologists to discover how ethnic identities were constructed
in the past, which ultimately leads to questioning the supposed
naturalness of tribal divisions in human antiquity.
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