Animal rearing, hunting and sacrifice in the high Andes, ancient and modern: a comparative perspective

Denise Arnold, Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara, La Paz, and UCL, London, UK

08/09/2021, 15:00-17:00, hybrid, zoom: LINK

Animal rearing, hunting and sacrifice in the high Andes, ancient and modern: a comparative perspective

A common idea in the Andean region is that rituals to the mountains are part of a social contract between local populations and these powerful places, directed towards stabilising ecological systems and controlling resource management in their surrounding areas. But mountains also serve as a crucial point of reference for superhuman powers, to constrain the extent of human intervention in a certain environment, and respond to the excessive abuse of extracting too many minerals, or too many animals or plants, by devouring the humans within its domain. This indigenous Andean deontics and its history, is my interest here.

Denise Arnold

Professor Denise Y. Arnold is an Anglo-Bolivian anthropologist (PhD, UCL 1988) who specializes in the Andes. She is Senior Research Fellow (Hon.) at UCL, at the University of London, and directs the Instituto de Lengua y Cultura Aymara in La Paz, Bolivia. Her recent publications include Situating the Andean Colonial Experience. Ayllus tales of History and Hagiography in the Time of the Spanish (Arc Humanities Press 2021) and Crítica de la razón andina (ed. with Carlos Abreu Mendoza, Contra Corriente, University of North Carolina Press, 2018).