BASC 201 - Tiwanaku: Food, Economy and Ritual
Terms
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- marginal environment
- titicaca basin is challenging and unproductive territory, but combined with other resources and without 500 years of oppression, was fertile enough to support the urban Tiwanaku population
- structure of fields
- not simply individual family plots; large agricultural landscape and infrastructure; implemented and maintained by state administrators, managers and other specialists; katari river artificially straightened to facilitate irrigation
- mountain significance
- control weather, bring rain, unleash hail, final resting place of ancestral beings, owners of land and water
- diversity of dwellings
- economic; religious (localized rituals, cemetaries); ethnicity (thanks to immigration); profession (craft, ceramics, etc.)
- subsistence agriculture
- pastoralism; lake and riverine resources; intensive agriculture
- intensive agriculture
- most important: raised fields, tubers, aquatic plants
- Tiwanaku
- ritual, political, agricultural capital of bolivia
- Akapana drainage system
- completely overbuilt; no need for such an elaborate system. system promotes the circulation of water itself, has to do withthe concept of camay, a sacred aanimating force. canals bring the Akapana to life.
- how does akapana imitate a mountain?
- stepped shape; like that of Quimsachata; constructed out of green gravel from Quimsachata range, carried into valley from rivers and streams, brought to Akapana; circulation of water, whereby a network of drainage canals circulates water through building as in a real mountain
- environmental risks that the fields were designed to offsent
- killing frosts; ferocious rain and hailstorms; massive flooding with salty lake water; thread of drought
- canal heat conservation
- took advantage of sun, solar collectors; release heat during cold nights
- contemporary significance
- tiwanaku premier symbol of new bolivian national identity; aug. 2000 saw the museum of tiwanaku taken from the state by the local ayamara community, the true descendants; evo morales, new prez, held part of his inauguration ceremony at Tiwanaku dressed in native tiwanaku garb.
- Functions of raised-field agriculture
- promote drainage, maintain favourable climate (humidity, temperature); mitigate risk of frost, promote heat and water conservtion, higher yields, nutrient cycling
- Quimsachata
- most important peak
- causeways
- large elevated roadbeds; allowed for transport of crops, acted as dykes to prevent brackish lake water from flooding fields
- pastoralism
- llamas: meat, wool, bones, ritual, transport
- Bennet and Ponce Stela
- giant sculptures, carved, decorated, snuff box and goblet (kero); entering visitors were greeted by the elite leaders offering drugs and drink, perhaps served as ritual mediators between this world and the other
- fertilization
- llama dung; canals full of organic nutrients; piling canal muck on raised beds; fish bone
- Akapana
- AD 600; pyramid, communal earth shrine; 7 tier stepped pyramid, built to BE amountain (mimetic process, copy has the same power as original)
- tiwanaku origin
- pilgrimage site, religious significance; early city "empty"; however, residences made out of adobe leave v. little trace. residences later discovered, organized into a series of walled neighbourhoods with cobblestone foundations; apparent homogeneity masks diversity in economic status/niceness of dwellings
- lake and riverine resources
- fish, birds, reeds
- structure of agriculture
- raised mounds with canals in between them housing aquatic plants and nitrogen-fixing bactera for fertilizer and letting llamas graze on them and leave their dung behind