The human head has had important political, ritual and symbolic meanings throughout Andean history. Scholars have spoken of captured and trophy heads, curated crania, symbolic flying heads, head imagery on pots and on stone, head-shaped vessels, and linguistic references to the head. In this synthesizing work, cultural anthropologist Denise Arnold and archaeologist Christine Hastorf examine the cult of heads in the Andes--past and present--to develop a theory of its place in indigenous cultural practice and its relationship to political systems. Using ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork, highland-lowland comparisons, archival documents, oral histories, and ritual texts, the authors draw from Marx, Mauss, Foucault, Assadourian, Viveiros del Castro and other theorists to show how heads shape and symbolize power, violence, fertility, identity, and economy in South American cultures.

The warp-faced weaves of the Andes are the most complex in the world, with up to eight warp levels. Existing studies of Andean textiles use a technical language derived from other textile traditions (mainly tapestry from Europe and the Near East), but this book takes as its starting-point the technical terms in the Aymara and Quechua languages used by Andean weavers themselves. The result is a completely new way of understanding one of the great craft traditions of the world. Within its field, the authors' work is truly groundbreaking. This is a highly technical book that sets out the authors' alternative classification system via tables, photographs and diagrams. It is also a celebration of one of the most gorgeous and sophisticated weaving traditions in the world.

Desde la decada de los sesenta hasta el presente, varios estudios han analizado las formaciones discursivas que conforman la razon latinoamericana. Los ensayos del presente volumen se limitan al espacio mas estrecho--aunque igualmente desafiante--de los Andes, una categoria que, aun hoy, estamos lejos de definir univocamente. Abarcando un marco temporal que va desde el desarrollo y la expansion de culturas prehispanicas como Chavin y Tiwanaku hasta el activismo contemporaneo de un ecuatoriano migrante en Nueva York que lucha por reclamar su condicion indigena, el volumen propone una genealogia de conceptos como ""lo andino"" y ""andinismo"" a traves de una mirada critica a su desarrollo historico y su potencialidad teorica. La introduccion y los cinco capitulos en ingles y espanol reflexionan sobre el estado de los estudios andinos a partir de una serie de operaciones criticas que invitan a problematizar las estrategias politicas que se esconden detras de toda proclamacion de un origen andino para la nacion; subrayar el continuo proceso de reconstruccion y regeneracion de la cosmopraxis andina desde la conquista; interpelar la centralidad del siglo XIX en la constitucion de ""lo andino"" como una eficaz herramienta para institucionalizar la cultura nacional; historizar la construccion del ""andinismo"" como una categoria clave para al estudio de los procesos culturales andinos; y, por ultimo, contextualizar la dinamicidad de la cultura andina desde su afianzamiento en espacios globales.