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Lifeways In The Northern Mayan Lowlands: New Approaches To Archaeology In The Yucatán Peninsula, Jennifer P. Mathews, Bethany A. Morrison

Faculty Authored and Edited Books & CDs

The flat, dry reaches of the northern Yucatán Peninsula have been largely ignored by archaeologists drawn to the more illustrious sites of the south. This book is the first volume to focus entirely on the northern Maya lowlands, presenting a broad cross-section of current research projects in the region by both established and up-and-coming scholars. To address the heretofore unrecognized importance of the northern lowlands in Maya prehistory, the contributors cover key topics relevant to Maya studies: the environmental and historical significance of the region, the archaeology of both large and small sites, the development of agriculture, resource management, ancient …

Introduction: Amerindian Modes Of Knowledge, George Mentore, Fernando Santos-Granero

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

No abstract provided.

The Stench Of Death And The Aromas Of Life: The Poetics Of Ways Of Knowing And Sensory Process Among Piaroa Of The Orinoco Basin, Joanna Overing

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The Piaroa are people, living along tributaries of the middle Orinoco, who recognize that the dance of every bodily process participates in a poisonous, primordial design of things. This paper explores the relation of sensory processes and the cosmic to Piaroa ways of knowing and doing their arts of the culinary. In so doing it is an expedition into ethnopoetics. My focus is upon the interplay of two contrasting narrative genres—the sublime and grotesque realism—as used by shamanic chanters to unfold the manifold ways in which bodily processes and sensory life are intimately involved in ways of knowing. The imagery …

From One To Metaphor: Toward An Understanding Of Pa’Ikwené (Palikur) Mathematics, Alan Passes

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This article addresses an aspect of Pa’ikwené knowledge called púkúha, which means both “to understand” and “to count.” It explores the indigenous numerology and the close relationship,no less imaginative than empirical,between mathematics and linguistics that is not always apparent in non-oral societies such as ours. The Pa’ikwené mathematical system is conceptually inventive and lexically profuse, some numerals having over two hundred different forms in current usage thanks to an intensive, affix-based process of morphemic transformations. Thereby, a number word can belong to twenty-one numerical classes relating to five distinct semantic categories incorporating diverse discrete states or qualities (male/female, concrete/abstract, …

The Triumph And Sorrow Of Beauty: Comparing The Recursive, Contrapuntal, And Cellular Aesthetics Of Being, George Mentore

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The principal assumption put forward in this paper will be that for the Waiwai the privileging of lateral visibility brings ideas about a fractal individual into association with recursive power, while for coastal Guyanese and U.S. societies, respectively, the privileging of axial visibility brings concepts about an autonomous individual into association with contrapuntal and cellular relations of power. It will be argued that, contrary to the Waiwai situation, in its agenda to achieve a greater efficiency for the workings of its political relations with its citizens, the desire of the modern state, expressed through its privileged use of axial visibility, …

“Purús Song”: Nationalization And Tribalization In Southwestern Amazonia, Peter Gow

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Starting from a statement about knowledge and power by a Piaroa informant of Joanna Overing, the article analyses two descriptions of a meal on the Purús river in the early twentieth century: a Piro song and a short essay by Euclides da Cunha. Contrasting these two pieces in the context of how the ancestors of the Piro people of today came to meet the famous Brazilian writer, I propose the concepts of “nationalization” and “tribalization” as modes of symbolic action. Nationalization takes local events and escalates them into the space-time of the nation state, while tribalization deactivates the dangerous ramifications …

“The Effectiveness Of Symbols” Revisited: Ayoreo Curing Songs, John Renshaw

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This essay considers a specific field of Amerindian knowledge, namely the sarode, or curing songs, of the Ayoreo of the Gran Chaco. It attempts to elucidate some of the taken-for-granted metaphysical assumptions that underlie Ayoreo epistemology. Following the approach taken in Joanna Overing’s introduction to Reason and Morality (1985), I will suggest that even these apparently simple, repetitive curing songs have to be understood as part of a broader corpus of “mythical” knowledge. They acquire their effectiveness or power, not through suggestion or metaphor but rather by harnessing the power of the “mythical” world of the jnani bajade, the …

Laughing At Power And The Power Of Laughing In Cashinahua Narrative And Performance, Elsje Lagrou

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The grotesque humor of pantomime and myth, the festive humor of play, and the humor used to criticize excesses in myth and comic sketches, can all be read as modes of native knowledge of the world and of the relationships holding this world together. Native exegesis of humorous imagery reveals crucial values related to Cashinahua concepts about sociality and ritual agency. These are iconic discourses about the quality of relations between people and between people and the animated world. The humor of the grotesque body, which is composed of parts of the body acting as autonomous forces, and the festive …

Bororo Funerals: Images Of The Refacement Of The World, Sylvia Caiuby Novaes

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

In this article I analyze Bororo funerals as moments of defacement and refacement. Death triggers a series of transformations that involve the dead person, the corpse itself, the soul, the making of the deceased’s representative, and the relationships among the living. All these transformations—which are the object of public secrecy—take place during the various rituals that compose the funerary cycle. The text is accompanied by a selection of photographs taken during thirty years of field research among the Bororo Indians of Mato Grosso, Brazil, in order to illustrate Bororo funerals as moments of re-creation of the world, following the theoretical …

Instrumental Speeches, Morality, And Masculine Agency Among Muinane People (Colombian Amazon), Carlos David Londono Sulkin

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Individuals among People of the Center (Colombian Amazon) produced numerous discursive depictions of themselves and of others, regarding their own competence and morality and others’ lacks thereof. Here, I attend particularly to a set of portrayals that pertained mostly to men: those concerning forms of knowledge that each People of the Center deemed uniquely their own. Individuals stressed the great amount of knowledge they possessed, the propriety of their processes of acquisition and the legitimacy of their use of it, its effectiveness and authentically patrilineal character, and the respect and fear others had of them because of it. They also …

The Politics Of Shamanism And The Limits Of Fear, Robert Storrie

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The Hoti are a small group of hunter-horticulturalists living in the highlands of central Venezuelan Guiana. In this article I examine Hoti understandings of equality, hierarchy and power and the coercive use of fear by individuals who cultivate a reputation as “Light Ones”—that is people especially skilled in their interaction with the powerful beings of the shamanic environment—a role that is essential for the safety and fertility of the community. Hoti people are highly egalitarian and anti-hierarchical in their moral understandings and for them all power is ambiguous, and all claims to authority can arouse suspicion. For this reason it …

The Strength Of Thoughts, The Stench Of Blood: Amazonian Hematology And Gender, Luisa Elvira Belanunde

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

This paper lays the grounds for an Amazonian hematology aiming to unlock the significance of blood with relation to gender, knowledge, and cosmology. Drawing guidance from Overing’s critique of patriarchy theory and her examination of Piaroa understandings of menstruation, it explores cross-cultural ideas about the embodiment and gendering of spirits, thought and strength in the blood, arguing that the flow of blood is conceived of as a relationship, for it transports knowledge to all body parts, both uniting and differentiating men and women, and constituting the hub of a person’s existence throughout his or her lifecycle. Through an examination of …

Sensual Vitalities: Noncorporeal Modes Of Sensing And Knowing In Native Amazonia, Fernando Santos-Granero

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Yanesha people of eastern Peru would agree with Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas that knowledge can only be achieved through sense perception. They would, however, disagree on what exactly “sense perception” means. In the Western tradition the senses are considered to be the “physiological” modes of perception. We can only know, it is asserted, through the body and its senses: sight, hearing, smell, touch, and taste. In contrast, Yanesha people view bodily senses as imperfect means of knowing, unable to grasp the true, spiritual dimension of the world. Only one of the noncorporeal components of the self, yecamquëñ or “our …

Matsigenka Corporeality, A Nonbiological Reality: On Notions Of Consciousness And The Constitution Of Identity, Dan Rosengren

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

Departing from the specific case of Matsigenka people in the Montaña of southeastern Peru, this article challenges some of the assumptions associated with predominant conceptions of Amazonian perspectivism. Examining different cultural registers such as birth rituals and mythology, Matsigenka peoples’ notions about being, soul, and self are discussed in relation to the importance that often is ascribed to physical shape for conceptualizing the world. In contrast to this stress on the corporeal, it is argued that Matsigenka people consider the noncorporeal cognizant self to determine outlook and identity. In accordance, corporeal transformation is seen as a result of “the self …

On Body And Soul, Guilherme Werlang

Tipití: Journal of the Society for the Anthropology of Lowland South America

The notions of “body”and “soul,” within the dual universe of the Marubo from southwestern Amazonia, intersect other contributions to this volume: first, in view of the present concern, from a universalizing perspective, on epistemological issues in Amazonia; and second, in view of a now ever-present relevance of indigenous ontology (here more as the “presentation,” rather than the “investigation” or “account” of the origins of the cosmos and all forms of being therein) vis-à-vis the knowledge, with a particularizing tenor, of the performance of a cognitive ethos.

As noções de “corpo” e “alma,” dentro do universo dual dos Marubo do Sudoeste …