Mummies and Mortuary Monuments: A Postprocessual Prehistory of Central Andean Social Organization

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Description

Since prehistoric times, Andean societies have been organized across the ayllu, a grouping of real or ceremonial kinspeople who share labor, resources, and ritual obligations. Many Andean scholars imagine that the ayllu is as ancient as Andean culture itself, perhaps dating back so far as 6000 B.C., and that it arose to alleviate the hardships of farming within the mountainous Andean environment.

In this boldly revisionist book, alternatively, William Isbell persuasively argues that the ayllu developed all over the latter half of the Early Intermediate Period (around A.D. 200) as a means of resistance to the process of state formation. Drawing on archaeological evidence, in addition to records of Inca life taken from the chroniclers, Isbell asserts that prehistoric ayllus were organized across the veneration of deceased ancestors, whose mummified bodies were housed in open sepulchers, or challups, where they might be visited by descendants searching for approval and favors. By charting the temporal and spatial distribution of chullpa ruins, Isbell offers a convincing new explanation of where, when, and why the ayllu developed.

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