Pastoralism in the Andes

by

Penelope Dransart

• LAST MODIFIED: 25 September 2018
• DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199766581-0200

General Introduction

The topic considered in this bibliography has emerged fairly recently. Pastoralism is a subsistence economy in which people keep large herds of animals, and it is based on the extensive use of pasture grounds. Instead of growing fodder to feed their herds, pastoralists usually take them to different pastures to which they have access. Seasonal mobility is a fundamental aspect of most pastoralist societies. For much of the 20th century, some authors dogmatically proclaimed that pastoralism existed in Eurasia, in various parts of the African continent, and in the sub-Arctic, but not in the Americas. They argued that the introduction of sheep to the Navajo in North America enabled some native people to become pastoralists. In 1908 Éric Boman mentioned herding communities at high altitude in Argentina and, in 1946 Bernard Mishkin remarked on herding communities in Peru, but these notices went unheeded (see Webster 1973, cited under Defining Pastoralism as a Way of Life in the Andes). These mentions acquired significance in the 1960s, when Jorge Flores Ochoa (originally publishing in Spanish) and Horst Nachtigall (originally publishing in German) challenged the view that pastoralism was absent in the Andes. In a series of influential articles, the historian John V. Murra argued that independent pastoralist communities did not exist in the pre-Hispanic past because such communities would have formed part of a greater agrarian economy. Yet the emerging ethnographic evidence suggested there were people who had been specialist herders for considerable periods of time. Researchers therefore started to question how pastoralism arose. Did it have ancient, pre-Hispanic roots, or was the phenomenon recent, postdating the 16th-century arrival of Europeans? In the 1960s, authors did not have access to the findings more recently reported by archaeologists and archaeozoologists. The theme of “production pastorale et société” drew scholars together in France to tackle social aspects of pastoralist production, and some of them turned their attention toward the Andes. By 1969 French researchers had begun to collaborate on interdisciplinary field projects undertaken with counterparts from the United States, focusing on the Ayacucho basin and the Puna de Junín in Peru. From the 1970s onward, the study of pastoralism in the Andes rapidly acquired the multi- and interdisciplinary characteristics on which the selection of publications chosen for this bibliography is based. There is still a shortage of general overviews on pastoralism in the Andes; many of the publications included here restrict their coverage to a particular region and/or to specific aspects of pastoralism. The sections are therefore organized on a thematic basis. These themes intersect, however, and are not mutually exclusive.

Defining Pastoralism as a Way of Life in the Andes

The body of literature emerging since the 1960s concentrates on the Andean region where the puna provides extensive pastures. The puna is a high-altitude plateau with steppe-like vegetation in terrain cut by valleys and bordered by volcanic peaks. It stretches from its northern limit south of Cajamarca, Peru, to just short of Jujuy, Argentina, encompassing the highlands of Bolivia and northern Chile. Rainfall is greater in the northern part of the puna, with increasing aridity toward the south, where it meets the xeric Atacama Desert. The literature emphasizes the herding of native llamas and alpacas, but other herd animals include European-introduced sheep, bovine cattle, donkeys, and mules. Blench 2001 and Lasanta 2010 provide overviews from biological and ecological standpoints defining pastoralism and grazing on a worldwide, comparative basis. The other entries listed in this section are by authors who conducted their own field research in the puna, and they are concerned with social and cultural approaches. Webster 1973 and Browman 1974, writing from social anthropological and archaeological perspectives, respectively, adopt a comparative vein, using cases from other parts of the world to demonstrate that pastoralist societies in the Andes can comfortably be considered to exemplify pastoralism. Anthropologists use qualitative social dimensions to complement the ecological aspects concerning the browsing and grazing habits of herd animals. While animals are owned by private individuals and herded by family units, rangelands are typically owned in common. Colonial and republican histories in the Andes have, however, resulted in different practices, and in some regions pasture grounds are under private ownership. Flores Ochoa 1977, Flores Ochoa 1978, Flores Ochoa 1979, Celestino-Husson 1985, Dransart 2002, and Bugallo and Tomasi 2012 all discuss the social dimensions of pastoralist societies, including concepts of ownership and herding practices. These include irrigating areas of moist vegetation (bofedales) to extend the pasturage, especially to alpacas, and the naming techniques that Quechua- and Aymara-speaking herders use to identify individual animals. The term pastoralism is a category derived from Latin, “to feed.” Pastoralists in the Andes instead talk about “caring for” their animals (uwyaña in Aymara), while Bugallo and Tomasi 2012 discusses the notion of “fondness” among Spanish-speaking pastoralists in northwestern Argentina. Note that the Spanish term trato in the title of this article to characterize human-herd animal relations has a range of meanings, including “treatment” and “pact, agreement.”

• Blench, Roger. You Can’t Go Home Again: Pastoralism in the New Millennium. FAO Animal Production and Health Paper 150. Rome: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, 2001.

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  This report considers pastoralism in different parts of the world, including the Andes, combining archaeological and anthropological evidence with development studies. The author argues that pastoral societies are driven by herd animals’ biological requirements. He classifies pastoralist systems according to species, herd management, geographical location, and ecology, arguing that present-day crises do not necessarily signal the imminent collapse of pastoralist economies because historical instances demonstrate their capacity to return.

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• Browman, David. “Pastoral Nomadism in the Andes.” Current Anthropology 15.2 (1974): 188–196.

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  Using archaeological, historical, and ethnographic evidence, Browman argues that people adopted seminomadic pastoralism in the Jauja-Huancayo basin, Peru, from c. 7000 BP. Low temperatures and poor pastures in the puna favored the exploitation of camelids for fleece in an economy also including hunting, limited horticulture, and trade. Herders would have maintained short-term balance through seasonal dispersal to different pasture grounds. A sudden change occurred c. 550 CE with the imposition of Wari control.

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• Bugallo, Lucila, and Jorge Tomasi. “Crianzas mutuas: El trato a los animales desde las concepciones de los pastores puneños (Jujuy, Argentina).” Revista Española de Antropología Americana 42.1 (2012): 205–224.

  DOI: 10.5209/rev_REAA.2012.v42.n1.38644Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  In two case studies from the neighboring highland departments of Susques and Cochinoca, in the province of Jujuy, Argentina, the authors discuss houses, corrals, and ritual structures. They consider the Spanish terms pastoralists use in their herding practices and their motivation for keeping animals. Relations between the herders and herd animals are characterized by a concept of cariño (fondness), because herders and herd animals tend for each other.

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• Celestino-Husson, Olinda. “Eleveurs aymaras des punas de Puno.” Production pastorale et société: Recherches sur l’écologie et l’anthropologie des sociétés pastorales 16 (1985): 85–94.

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  Citing the work of Félix Palacios Ríos, the author describes herding technologies and social organization in Chinchillapi, Department of Puno, Peru. She explains how areas of wet pasture ground (bofedales) are extended by irrigation, how long it takes to establish these pastures, and how herders manage separate herds of male and female alpacas and of male and female llamas. Herding entails no marked difference in the sexual division of labor.

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• Dransart, Penelope Z. Earth, Water, Fleece and Fabric: An Ethnography and Archaeology of Andean Camelid Herding. London: Routledge, 2002.

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  Focusing on relationships maintained between herders and camelids through the spinning of fleece in the Atacama Desert and Isluga, northern Chile, the author examines concepts of owning herd animals by juxtaposing ethnographic, historical, and archaeological evidence, tracking changes from 5000 BP to the 20th century. She examines transformations as hunter-gatherers became pastoralists, how camelids transform pasture into fleece, and how herders transform fleece into yarn and fabric.

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• Flores Ochoa, Jorge A. “Classification et dénomination des camélidés sud-américains.” Annales: Économies, sociétés, civilisations 33.5–6 (1978): 1006–1016.

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  The author analyzes a classificatory system Quechua-speaking herders use to name their alpacas and llamas, demonstrating the deep relationship between humans and camelids. He considers herders’ concepts for explaining the existence of wild and domesticated camelids. The article discusses the names herders give to variation in fleece color and the different configurations of colored patches that enable herders to recognize each animal as an individual.

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• Flores Ochoa, Jorge. Pastoralists of the Andes: The Alpaca Herders of Paratía. Translated by Ralph Bolton. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues, 1979.

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  This ethnographic monograph describes life in Paratía, Department of Puno, Peru, based on fieldwork conducted in 1964 among herders of alpacas and llamas. Flores Ochoa draws attention to the emotional reliance people have on their herds and the roles given to them in religious ceremonies. Chapter 4 presents different hypotheses concerning the antiquity of camelid pastoralism in the Andes, as well as a useful characterization of pastoralism as a subsistence economy. Originally published in Spanish in 1968.

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• Flores Ochoa, Jorge, ed. Pastores de puna: Uywamichiq punarunakuna. Lima, Peru: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1977.

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  This edited volume contains chapters written from multidisciplinary perspectives dedicated to the study of pastoralist communities in Peru. Topics covered include human adaptation to high-altitude environments, pastoralists’ trading relations with other communities, ritual practices, and the situation faced by pastoralists in Peru after the commencement of agrarian reform in 1969. Some contributors share their anxiety that pastoralism in the Peruvian Andes might not survive for long in the future.

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• Lasanta, Teodoro. “Pastoreo en áreas de montaña: Estrategías e impactos en el territorio.” Estudios Geográficos 71.268 (2010): 203–233.

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  Starting from the observation that grazing implies that herd animals eat pasture, the author associates the extensive availability of such food sources with mountain environments. He presents an overview of different herd animals and the different types of vegetation they eat in various parts of the world. Lasanta discusses nomadic and transhumant cycles of movement as a seasonal phenomenon mirroring the movements of local wild animals.

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• Webster, Steven. “Native Pastoralism in the South Andes.” Ethnology 12.2 (1973): 115–133.

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  In his literature review, Webster observes that evidence for pastoralism in the Andes began to receive systematic attention in the 1960s with the work of Flores Ochoa and Nachtigall. Arguing that pastoralism in the Andes is relevant to the comparative study of pastoralist communities in other parts of the world, he uses ethnographic evidence from Q’ero, Peru, to discuss the herders’ social standing, their control over herd animals, and rituals.

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Ethnographies of Pastoralist Communities

In this section you will find book-length monographs and articles or book chapters written by authors who immersed themselves for considerable periods of time in the social setting of a pastoralist community. Ethnographic monographs characteristically incorporate descriptive writing (in the works listed here it richly evokes the lives of people who herd animals) along with analysis of the subject matter that motivated the research topic. Martínez 1976 and Ricard Lanata 2007 consider how people conceptualize earth beings called uywiri (among Aymara-speaking herders of Isluga) and apu (among Quechua-speaking herders in the massif of Ausangate). In both communities, people maintain that these beings order the land forms and regenerate vitality in humans, herd animals, and pastures. Martínez and Ricard Lanata explore people’s religious experiences concerning their relationships with the external and internal worlds constituted by local land forms. The song traditions examined by Arnold and Yapita 2001 open up the ecological and metaphysical perspectives of women herder-weavers concerning the colors and other qualities of fleece, as well as ancestral relations, both human and nonhuman. Orlove 1977 takes a different approach to fleece, couched in terms of cultural ecology. At the time the book was published, reviewers found Orlove’s discussion relied on overly abstract categories better suited to inductive generalization. His discussion of production zones and the differential access pastoral haciendas and small-scale herders have to pastures for herding alpacas, llamas, and sheep is, however, relevant to recent discussions concerning climate change. Bolton 2006 focuses on competing claims to knowledge in Lípez, Bolivia, in discussing the opposing attitudes locals and outsiders hold on the genetic “defects” the outsiders have identified in herds of camelids. Göbel 1997 discusses how pastoralists in Huancar, Argentina, tackle risks, environmental and political uncertainties, and hardship through the concept of suerte (luck), because one’s lack of suerte in herding, say, llamas might be mitigated by success in herding sheep or goats. The fieldwork described in Krögel 2000 among migrant Peruvian sheepherders on ranches in Wyoming (USA) highlights how arduous life is without the sustenance provided by family, but also without the annual ritual cycle with its periodic events to revitalize herds and the land. Krögel’s ethnography demonstrates the depth of feeling felt by the sheepherders who have lost a sense of interconnectedness through their migrant status.

• Arnold, Denise Y., and Juan de Dios Yapita. River of Fleece, River of Song: Singing to the Animals, an Andean Poetics of Creation. Bonner Amerikanistische Studien 35; ILCA Serie Etnografías 2. Markt Schwaben, Germany: A. Saurwein. 2001.

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  Originally published in Spanish in 1998, this monograph develops the central proposition that for agropastoralist Aymara-speaking women in Qaqachaka, Department of Oruro, Bolivia, to sing is to weave, and, in singing to their herd animals, their herding practices are intimately related to fleece production and weaving activities. By exploring the songs’ sound-meanings, the authors demonstrate how obligations between people and herd animals constitute a sophisticated world of metaphysical relationships.

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• Bolton, Maggie. “Genetic Defects or Generative Prototypes? Competing Models for Livestock Improvement in Southern Bolivia.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, n.s., 12 (2006): 531–549.

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  Against a neoliberal political context in which outside agencies attempt to persuade Lípez pastoralists to “improve” llamas by hybridizing them through the exchange of genetic capital obtained from external sources, herders emphasize that improvement can occur from within the herd. Because “defects” can serve as generative prototypes associated with fertility, the author argues that development agendas must take noneconomic factors into account in order to achieve economic goals.

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• Göbel, Barbara. “‘You Have to Exploit Luck’: Pastoral Household Economy and the Cultural Handling of Risk and Uncertainty in the Andean Highlands.” Nomadic Peoples, n.s., 1.1 (1997): 37–53.

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  This article outlines the subsistence economy of a pastoralist community, Huancar (Jujuy Province, northwestern Argentina), in response to stochastic changes in ecological and socioeconomic conditions. The author takes into account different problems encountered by herders, including gendered shortages in the work force. She examines how herders handle the notion of suerte (luck) in a strategic manner to incorporate cultural meanings in the management of risk and uncertainty.

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• Krögel, Alison. “Quechua Sheepherders on the Mountain Plains of Wyoming: The (In)hospitality of U.S. Guest Worker Programs.” Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology 15.2 (2000): 261–288.

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  This article considers the fate of Quechua migrants caring for sheep in a ranching economy, employed for their specialist herding skills acquired in the Andes. In their oral histories, sheepherders use a narrative trope of the waka orphan to highlight their solitude. The author discusses the aporia of the herders’ status as temporary “guest” workers in the United States in workplaces valuing profit margins over relationships between people, herds, and the land.

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• Martínez, Gabriel. “El sistema de los uywiris en Isluga.” Anales de la Universidad del Norte (Chile) 10 (1976): 255–327.

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  Based on a study of place names and spatial concepts in the pastoralist community of Isluga, northern Chile, the author examines people’s relationships with the uywiris, in the form of hills, hollows, and springs of water. Martínez classifies uywiri as uywiri-cerro, pukara, juturi, and sereno, each of these types having male and female manifestations. Uywiri place order on land forms and revitalize productive energy by nurturing people and herd animals.

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• Orlove, Benjamin S. Alpacas, Sheep, and Men: The Wool Export Economy and Regional Society in Southern Peru. New York: Academic Press, 1977.

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  The author studies the export of sheep and alpaca fleeces from the Sicuani region in highland southern Peru, taking into account the complex relationships established, since the 19th century, between local Peruvian and international wool markets. He uses a “sectorial” model involving pastoral haciendas, agricultural haciendas, herders, peasants, wholesale traders, retail traders, rural traders, urban artisans, rural artisans, and bureaucrats to investigate occupational categories and enterprises in the exploitation of fleece.

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• Ricard Lanata, Xavier. Ladrones de sombra: El universo religioso de los pastores del Ausangate (Andes surperuanos). Translated by Sandra Recarte. Serie Antropologia 13. Lima, Peru: Instituto Francés de Estudios Andinos, 2007.

  DOI: 10.4000/books.ifea.611Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The monograph focuses on religious beliefs in Siwina Sallma, a pastoralist community of Quechua-speaking herders of llamas, alpacas, and sheep in the massif of Ausangate, south of Cuzco, Peru. The author explores the ontological coherence of how people perceive relationships between themselves, mountain beings (apus), and herd animals. To avoid risking interpretive misunderstandings, he discusses the status of their beliefs in reference to the philosopher Willard Van Orman Quine’s principle of charity.

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Ritual Practices in Pastoralist Communities

The contributions here are, as in the section titled Ethnographies of Pastoralist Communities, based on the authors’ ethnographic fieldwork in pastoralist or agropastoralist communities. Gose 1994 defines ritual as “a moment of practice that is intrinsically incomplete and necessarily resolves itself into other moments, most notably labour.” Much ritual effort is expended in pastoralist communities on revitalizing the productive energies of people, herd animals, and the land. One of the most important ceremonies in the annual cycle of the herding year is performed to enhance animal fertility (Nachtigall 1975). The human participants ritually dress their llamas, alpacas, sheep, and other animals in brightly colored adornments while playing music and singing to them. Variations of this ceremony are called señalada or floreo (“marking” or “flowering” in Spanish), and t’inkachiy, hayawarisqa, or señalakuy among Quechua speakers (Flores Ochoa 1974–1976, Zorn 1987, Brougère 1988, Lecoq and Fidel 2003). Among Aymara speakers it is called k’illpa, and in Isluga, wayñu. Bolin 1998 respectfully accepts that many people in Chillihuani understand their ritual activities, including the señalakuy, as having changed little from Inca times. Bolin’s recounting of people’s deeply imaginative responses to Santa Barbara and Santiago, however, suggests a more complex legacy from the past in relation to pre-Hispanic traditions and Christian impositions. In discussing the wayñu in Isluga, Dransart 2002 explores intricate relationships between co-present modes of thought in connection with Christian images of sheep, which can substitute for humans in European ontological beliefs, but not in Isluga, because herders recognize that both human and herd animals require spiritual nourishment that ritual activity seeks to obtain. In contrast to the flowering ceremonies, there are fewer published descriptions of the ritual dressing of llamas when herders make caravan trading expeditions to other communities. In Lecoq and Fidel 2003 and Leonor Miluska Muñoz Palomino’s chapter in Rivera Andía 2014, the authors describe how the herders take pride in dressing their llamas, especially the animals leading the caravan, and perform rituals associated with the expedition. Other rituals reported in Rivera Andía 2014 include ceremonial practices accompanying the cleaning of irrigation canals. Yacobaccio and Malmierca 2006 provides an archaeological perspective on the use of material objects and how they are used in the spatial arrangements of performing rituals.

• Bolin, Inge. Rituals of Respect: The Secret of Survival in the High Peruvian Andes. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998.

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  This portrait of people’s lives in Chillihuani, Department of Cuzco, Peru, focuses on the annual ritual cycle in the context of work activities—llama and alpaca herding combined with the cultivation of potatoes and qañiwa (Chenopodium pallidicaule). Bolin describes ritual offerings to powerful mountain beings and other places venerated as guardians of wild and domesticated animals. Chapter 4 discusses fertility rites intended to increase herd sizes among llamas and alpacas.

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• Brougère, Anne-Marie. “El t’inkachiy: Revitalización simbólica del enqa en la puna de Arequipa.” Anthropologica 6.6 (1988): 67–83.

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  Individual families host a three-day ceremony known as t’inkachiy to mark their herd animals, mostly camelids, in Sibayo, Department of Arequipa, Peru. Brougère argues the main purpose of the ceremony is to renew a generative principle called enqa, which resides in stones symbolizing the reproductive males of a herd. These stones (enqaychu) protect herds, ensuring their well-being, and all the stages of the ceremony emanate from this generative principle.

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• Dransart, Penelope. “Concepts of Spiritual Nourishment in the Andes and Europe: Rosaries in Cross-Cultural Contexts.” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 8, n.s., (2002): 1–21.

  DOI: 10.1111/1467-9655.00096Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This article examines different visual codes associated with the Christian rosary produced by Andean pastoralists and by Europeans. Images of the Virgin Mary as the Divine Shepherdess with a flock of Christians depicted as rose-eating sheep present different social and moral messages than those conveyed by the elaborate marking or “flowering” ceremony (wayñu) in Isluga, northern Chile, which serves as a rite of passage for herd animals.

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• Flores Ochoa, Jorge A. “Enqa, enqaychu, illa y khuya rumi: Aspectos mágico-religiosos entre pastores.” Journal de la société des américanistes 63 (1974–1976): 245–262.

  DOI: 10.3406/jsa.1974.2129Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The author discusses concepts and material objects used in a ceremony called hayawarisqa, celebrated between the end of December and the moveable festival of Carnival in the highlands of southern Peru. He regards the generative concept of enqa and the ritual objects (illa, enqaychu and khuya rumi) as the means herders use to establish relations with their alpaca herds and the environment, which sustains human and nonhuman existence.

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• Gose, Peter. Deathly Waters and Hungry Mountains: Agrarian Ritual and Class Formation in an Andean Town. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994.

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  This book is about the annual cycle of labor and ritual in Huaquirca, a southern Peruvian community with an agrarian economy supplemented by the herding of cattle (cows). Gose examines alternating cycles of dormancy and fertility in a political context linked to themes of enclosure and dispossession. His discussion of grazing lands and canal cleaning considers relations between Huaquirca residents and pastoralists in the puna.

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• Lecoq, Patrice, and Sergio Fidel. “Prendas simbólicas de camélidos y ritos agro-pastorales en el sur de Bolivia.” Textos Antropológicos 14.1 (2003): 1–55.

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  Based on fieldwork in the agropastoralist community of Ventilla, northeast of Uyuni, Bolivia, this article describes the ritual dressing of herd animals during the señalakuy marking ceremony. It provides detailed observations on the owner’s marks cut into the animals’ ears. The authors discuss shorter caravan journeys made to the Salar de Uyuni to obtain salt and longer expeditions made to trade in the valleys.

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• Nachtigall, Horst. Ofrenda de llamas en la vida ceremonial de los pastores. Allpanchis Phuturinqa 8 (1975): 133–140.

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  The author observed offerings made to the Pachamama and the hills during ceremonies to increase the fertility of the herds during two visits to the Andes in 1962, the first in the Puna de Atacama, Argentina, during Carnival, and the second in the Department of Moquegua, Peru. Nachtigall argues for the antiquity of camelid fertility rituals, but he speculates that high-altitude pastoralism, independent from agricultural communities, postdated the Spanish invasion.

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• Rivera Andía, Juan Javier, ed. Comprender los rituales ganaderos en los Andes y más allá: Etnografías de lidias, herranzas y arrierías. Bonner Amerikanistiche Studien 51. Aachen, Germany: Shaker Verlag, 2014.

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  An introduction presents a comprehensive literature review, then the first part contains chapters on ceremonies in communities in the southern Peruvian highlands to mark the herd animals, rituals associated with the driving of llama caravans, and bull fighting. The second part is comparative in character, including chapters on concepts associated with the marking of herd animals in Cochinoca, Argentina, and chapters on rodeo and bull fighting in non-Andean regions.

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• Yacobaccio, Hugo D., and Marcela P. Malmierca. The Role of the Challada in Llama Culling (Puna de Atacama, Argentina). In Kay Pacha: Cultivating Earth and Water in the Andes. Edited by Penelope Dransart, 151–156. British Archaeological Reports, International Series 1478. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2006.

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  This paper investigates spatial organization in the use of artifacts during a herding ritual called challada in Susques, northwestern Argentina. The ritual accompanies the slaughter of llamas in everyday contexts and during major ceremonies in the annual ritual cycle. The authors examine juires (stone cairns), noting commonalities in the materials selected for present-day ceremonies with those found on the archaeological site of Puesta Demetria, five kilometers north of Susques.

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• Zorn, Elayne. “Un análisis de los tejidos en los atados rituales de los pastores.” Revista andina 10 (1987): 489–526.

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  This study of two types of woven cloth used in Macusani, Puno, Peru, focuses on señalakuy ceremonies dedicated to the fertility of herd animals. Zorn applies a semiotic methodology to explore the generative themes of procreation, fertility, and reproduction, which are expressed visually in the organization of striped designs in the textiles. She discusses gender roles and the symbolism of non-identical male and female pairs in the ritual artifacts used.

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Domestication of South American Camelids

If having access to extensive pastures is one requirement for pastoralism to become viable, having gregarious herd animals who tolerate being herded is another. Franklin 1982 comments that the relative number of large herbivores is much smaller in South America compared to the continent’s large numbers of rodents and bats. Native American Camelidae served as domesticable species until joined by European-introduced stock animals from the 16th century onward. Today, vicuña and guanaco are wild and alpaca and llama are domesticated forms of camelid. It is difficult to distinguish one from another when confronted by animal bones and fleece remains excavated from archaeological sites. In terms of behavior, the four are different, but morphologically there are similarities and the species can interbreed to produce fertile offspring. Specialists agree that llamas descend from the guanaco but disagree over alpaca ancestry. Some maintain that the guanaco is the ancestor of the alpaca, and others the vicuña. As can be seen from Mengoni Goñalons and Yacobaccio 2006 and Wheeler, et al. 2006, the taxonomic status of the alpaca is controversial. Wheeler, et al. 2006 presents genetic research demonstrating that many alpacas now possess guanaco mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA), but it also suggests affinity between alpaca and vicuña. Examples of recent research on camelid genetics include Barreta, et al. 2012 and Westbury, et al. 2016. There are grounds for possible consensus that alpaca and llama domestication arose independently at different times in more than one place. Bonavia 2008 suggests that camelids were perhaps domesticated in intermediate as well as high-altitude zones. Because Bonavia’s book is a translation of a work originally published in 1996, most of the literature considered was issued prior to this date, although he is comprehensive in his coverage of Peruvian excavation reports. He is scrupulous in separating out the works he consulted from other works he knew about but did not read. The reader should take care to consult his sources directly, because there are instances (despite the updating of the book for the translation) where sources are not summarized accurately. Mengoni Goñalons and Yacobaccio 2006 observe that archaeozoologists rely on different sorts of information when attempting to detect camelid domestication and the emergence of pastoralism. The publications in this section therefore also include Nelken Terner 1979, linking the domestication of camelids to seasonal nomadism; Dransart 1991, considering findings in the context of emergent pastoralism; and Haber 2007, discussing domestication as a concept.

• Barreta, Julia, Beatriz Gutiérrez-Gil, Volga Iñiguez, et al. “Analysis of Mitochondrial DNA in Bolivian Llama, Alpaca and Vicuna [sic] Populations: A Contribution to the Phylogeny of the South American Camelids.” Animal Genetics 44.2 (2012): 158–168.

  DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2052.2012.02376.xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This report assesses mitochondrial diversity in llama, alpaca, and vicuña populations. Examining evidence for evolutionary relationships between camelids in Bolivia and populations elsewhere in South America, the researchers found that mtDNA variability is lowest among vicuñas. They identified a high degree of hybridization among llamas and alpacas and suggest the domestication of guanacos as llamas occurred at more than one place. The authors discuss the complex genetic origin of alpacas.

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• Bonavia, Duccio. The South American Camelids. Translated by Javier Flores Espinoza. Los Angeles: Cotsen Institute of Archaeology, University of California, 2008.

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  This book reviews literature published on South American camelids from biological, paleontological, archaeological, and historical perspectives. Bonavia argues there might have been multiple centers of domestication, and that the present-day distribution of wild and domesticated camelids in the Andean highlands is not necessarily an indicator of where they were originally domesticated. In chapter 11 he questions whether pastoralism existed in the past in the Andes.

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• Dransart, Penelope. “Llamas, Herders and the Exploitation of Raw Materials in the Atacama Desert.” World Archaeology 22.3 (1991): 304–319.

  DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1991.9980148Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Changing relationships between humans and wild camelids are examined from 5000 to 1500 BP in valleys east of the Salar de Atacama, Chile, where camelid fleece survives under arid conditions. From hunting wild animals, people began to establish their own herds. Most animals kept by pastoralists c. 3000 BP had fleece colors resembling those of vicuña and guanaco. The emergence of dark brown and black fleece was a gradual development.

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• Franklin, William L. “Biology, Ecology, and Relationship to Man of the South American Camelids.” In Mammalian Biology in South America: A Symposium Held at the Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology, May 10–14, 1981. Edited by Michael A. Mares and Hugh H. Genoways, 457–489. Pymatuning Symposium in Ecology, Special Publications Series 6. Pittsburgh: Pymatuning Laboratory of Ecology, University of Pittsburgh, 1982.

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  Franklin discusses the ecological dominance of camelids in the Andes, whether wild (vicuñas and guanacos) or domesticated (alpacas and llamas), outlining how they became a strategic resource for human populations. He examines their evolution and geographical dispersion. Particularly useful is his discussion of camelid social organization (“how animals in a population are spatially and temporally organized with respect to one another”), and the behavioral ecology of camelids.

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• Haber, Alejandro F. “Vicuñas and Domesticity.” In Taphonomy and Zooarchaeology in Argentina. Edited by M. Gutiérrez, L. Miotti, G. Barrientos, G. Mengoni Goñalons, and M. Salemme, 59–70. BAR International Series 1601. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2007.

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  The author observes that “domestication” is a classificatory term having nothing to do with the attributes of the animal so designated. Using excavated evidence from Tebenquiche Chico, Antofagasta de la Sierra, Catamarca, Argentina, Haber discusses the domestic appropriation of vicuña meat and fleece in the light of historically contingent classificatory schemes.

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• Lavallée, Daniéle, ed. Telarmachay: Chasseurs et pasteurs préhistoriques des Andes. 2 vols. Synthèse 20. Paris: Éditions Recherche sur les Civilisations, 1985.

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  This publication reports on excavations from 1975 to 1980 at Telarmachay, a rock shelter site at 4,420 meters altitude, Department of Junín, Peru. Seven successive phases of occupation were detected. Jane Wheeler’s analysis of the abundant faunal remains indicates a transition from generalized hunting of cervids and camelids to specialized hunting of guanacos and vicuñas (7200–6000 BP), the early appearance of domesticated alpacas (6000–5500 BP), and the rearing of alpacas and llamas (after 5500 BP).

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• Mengoni Goñalons, Guillermo L., and Hugo D. Yacobaccio. “The Domestication of South American Camelids: A View from the South-Central Andes.” In Documenting Domestication: New Genetic and Archaeological Paradigms. Edited by Melinda Z. Zeder, Daniel G. Bradley, Eve Emshwiller, and Bruce D. Smith, 228–244. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

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  The authors use camelid bone, dental morphology, and fiber characteristics to review evidence indicating an increasing reliance on the hunting of camelids in the Central and the South-Central Andes after c. 8400 BP. They date the earliest managed herds of domesticated camelids in the Central Andes to 4600–3000 BP and in the South-Central Andes to 4400–3000 BP, arguing there was more than one center of domestication.

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• Nelken Terner, Antoinette. “Ayacucho (Pérou): Le premier nomadisme pastoral andin.” In Pastoral Production and Society/Production pastorale et société. Edited by L’Equipe écologie et antropologie des sociétés pastorales, 91–94. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

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  The author identifies two subsistence strategies in the Ayacucho Valley, Peru. In the first (5000–4000 BC), people took herds to high-altitude pastures during the dry season and returned to lower altitudes during the rainy season to cultivate tubers. The second (5900–4500 BC) is characterized by settlement in hamlets with intensive horticulture, the inhabitants sending some herders to accompany camelids in high-altitude pasture grounds during the dry season. Copublished by Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme (Paris).

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• Westbury, Michael, Stefan Prost, Andrea Seelenfreund, José-Miguel Ramírez, Elizabeth A. Matisoo-Smith, and Michael Knapp. “First Complete Mitochondrial Genome Data from Ancient South American Camelids—The Mystery of the Chilihueques from Isla Mocha (Chile).” Scientific Reports 6.38708 (2016).

  DOI: 10.1038/srep38708Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The researchers recovered three complete mitochondrial genomes from samples of camelid bone excavated from site P21–3 on the southwestern side of Isla Mocha, Chile. They grouped these sequenced samples with Lama guanicoe (guanaco) and not with Lama glama (llama), Vicugna vicugna (vicuña), or Vicugna pacos. The control region haplotypes of these samples differed from published reference data; the genetically closest haplotype is found in guanaco populations from southern South America.

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• Wheeler, Jane C., Lounès Chikhi, and Michael W. Bruford. “Genetic Analysis of the Origins of Domestic South American Camelids.” In Documenting Domestication: New Genetic and Archaeological Paradigms. Edited by Melinda Z. Zeder, Daniel G. Bradley, Eve Emshwiller, and Bruce D. Smith, 329–341. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.

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  Research on mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) sequences in South American camelids indicates bidirectional hybridization between llamas and alpacas. The authors use samples from Peru, Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia, confirming many alpacas possess a substantial proportion of guanaco mtDNA. Yet a significant proportion of alpacas possess vicuña mtDNA. They argue that alpacas have undergone “extreme hybridization”; 90 percent of Peruvian produced alpaca fiber now measures more than 25μm in diameter, compared with 17–22μm in pre-Hispanic animals.

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Hunting to Herding Native American Camelids

The first pastoralist societies in the Andes were also hunter-gatherers, and this section considers potential mechanisms for explaining the emergence of a pastoralist economy from a hunter-gatherer one. In other parts of the world, too, it has been demonstrated that there is no such thing as a pure pastoralist existence. The development of long-distance trade using llama caravans to transport goods was yet to come (see Pomeroy 2013, cited under Camelid Herding in the Tiwanaku and Wari States, Human-Camelid Relations in Rock Art and Spatial Approaches to the Study of Pastoralism in the Andes). Aldenderfer 1998 calls hunter-gatherers “foragers” in an exploration of an early example of an open-air domestic unit at Asana, Peru. Aldenderfer detected a decrease in human activity during the period 5000–3600 BP, and the people who moved in were already pastoralists accompanied by domesticated camelids. Pires-Ferreira, et al. 1976 examines occupation phases at the cave site of Uchcumachay in the Puna de Junín, Peru, and presents a developmental sequence of transitions through generalized hunting, specialized camelid hunting, and herding of domesticated camelids. They argue that drive and surround techniques would destroy the stability of vicuña family units consisting of an adult male and between four and seven adult females. Early human groups specialized in hunting camelids among interspersed vicuña and guanaco groups; they probably remained in the Puna de Junín all year round because of its perennial pasture. The authors suggest the technique used was ambush to avoid disrupting camelid family groups. Hesse 1982 explores evidence for coexistent hunting and herding at the site of Puripica-1, north of San Pedro de Atacama, Chile, in arid conditions with seasonal pastures. Hesse suggests vicuñas were hunted by driving techniques in steep-sided quebradas, and surround techniques in open terrain. His analysis shows that guanacos were being herded under close conditions in which disease spread, causing high mortality rates. Custred 1979 explores hunting as a precursor to domestication, taking into account the topography of valleys connecting the highlands with the coastal zone. He proposes that drive and surround techniques gave people the familiarity to domesticate camelids. Through time, hunting became a more residual activity. Under Inca control in the 15th and 16th centuries, vicuña capture for fleece was ceremonially restricted to the highest nobility (Garcilaso de la Vega 1966). It has become evident that research into the role of hunting in the emergence of pastoralism must take into account the social characteristics of herd animals as well as topography and seasonality in pasture availability.

• Aldenderfer, Mark S. Montane Foragers: Asana and the South-Central Andean Archaic. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press, 1998.

  DOI: 10.2307/j.ctt20q1wq5Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This report on archaeological investigations conducted in the Asana Valley in the Osmore Basin, southern Peru, outlines high-sierra and puna rim environments as the setting for a residential base for foragers from 10500 BP. Aldenderfer uses a central place foraging model to interpret increases in population density and social complexity, followed by rapid changes 5000–3600 BP, when a reduced number of herders and domesticated camelids occupied the site.

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• Custred, Glynn. “Hunting Technologies in Andean Culture.” Journal de la Société des Américanistes 66 (1979): 7–19.

  DOI: 10.3406/jsa.1979.2168Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The author examines historical evidence for different forms of hunting in the Andes, arguing that it enabled people to domesticate camelids. He describes vertical resource exploitation from the puna and páramo grasslands, which served as a high-altitude corridor, descending through transverse valleys to the relict grasslands of the coastal zone. He argues that a technique based on driving and surrounding wild camelids might have enabled hunters to start herding camelids.

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• Garcilaso de la Vega, El Inga. Royal Commentaries of the Incas and General History of Peru. Translated by H. V. Livermore. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1966.

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  First published 1609. The author, born in 1539 to an Inca princess and a Spanish cavalier, wrote this history of the origin, rise, and eclipse of the Inca Empire while living in Spain. Book VI, chapter VI, describes the “solemn hunt” of vicuña, guanaco, and other animals as a “cutting off, interception” (chaku).

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• Hesse, Brian. “Archaeological Evidence for Camelid Exploitation in the Chilean Andes.” Saugetierkandeliche Mitteilungen 30.3 (1982): 201–211.

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  Based on harvest profiles of camelids and bimodal proportions of fused epiphyses in foot bones, the author identifies large and small camelid species at the sites of Tambillo, Tulan-52, and Puripica-1. Hesse suggests the small form represents vicuña, which perhaps were hunted by driving techniques in steep-sided quebradas or, in the more open terrain at Tambillo, by surround techniques. Harvest profiles indicate the large form was being domesticated at Puripica-1.

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• Pires-Ferreira, Jane Wheeler, Edgardo Pires-Ferreira, and Peter Kaulicke. “Preceramic Animal Utilization.” Science, n.s., 194 (October 1976): 483–490.

  DOI: 10.1126/science.194.4264.483Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Describing the preceramic sequence of archaeological deposits at the cave of Uchcumachay, Puna de Junín, Peru, the authors discuss the faunal evidence compared with other sites in the region. They argue that the early occupants were generalized hunter-gatherers of cervids and camelids who specialized in hunting camelids during Level 5 (7500–4200 BP), which also contained evidence for domestic dog remains. They suggest hunting was based on ambushing wild camelids.

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Human-Camelid Relations in Rock Art

Rock art images include visual evidence for human interaction with camelids. Studies prior to the 1980s were published in a sporadic fashion but were stimulated by authors such as Hans Niemeyer Fernández in Chile and Carlos J. Gradin, the Argentinean dedicatee of the edited book Podestá and de Hoyos 2000. Conferences, for instance those held in Chile, with proceedings in Aldunate del Solar, et al. 1985, and Peru, in Hostnig, et al. 2007, provide opportunities for researchers to reassess research agendas for tackling problems in the study of rock art. In 1987 the Sociedad de Investigación del Arte Rupestre de Bolivia (SIARB) was founded to promote rock art study and conservation in Bolivia and neighboring countries, Querejazu Lewis 1992 being an example of one of its publications. Rock art takes various forms—it is engraved or painted on wall surfaces of caves and rock shelters, standing stones, boulders in the landscape, or on smaller stones. Geoglifos are formed from stones or scraped lines on the desert floor or hillslopes. In inter-Andean valleys in the far south of Peru and the north of Chile, there are large, complex rock art panels (painted at Toquepala, Peru, and Vilacaurani, Chile, for example) or engraved and painted (sites in the Loa and Salado valleys, Chile) in what have been termed “naturalistic” styles depicting camelids. It has been notoriously difficult to date panels of rock art, especially since rock art was made during earliest times and continued up to the colonial period. Berenguer Rodríguez 2005, Gallardo and Yacobaccio 2005, Vilches 2006, and Dudognon and Sepúlveda 2017 demonstrate some approaches employed in the analysis of “naturalistic” styles. They conclude that during the Early Formative Period (c. 3500 to 2500 BP) hunter-gatherer and early pastoralist societies coexisted, and that both expressed their relationships with camelids through rock art. For a graphic image of people wearing yarn turbans and fringed skirts of cords spun from camelid fleece at the Los Danzantes site, see Berenguer Rodríguez and Gallardo Ibañez 1999; evidence for these garments exists from archaeological excavations. Between 900 and 1535 CE there was a reduction in the variety of images in rock art depictions. Some of them show llama caravans, and Carlos Aschero, in Podestá and de Hoyos 2000, discusses the location of such images in the context of caravan trade undertaken by pastoralist communities.

• Aldunate del Solar, Carlos, Berenguer R. José, and Castro R. Victoria. Estudios en arte rupestre: Primeras jornadas de arte y arqueología el arte rupestre en Chile. Santiago, Chile: Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, 1985.

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  The proceedings of the first national conference dedicated to rock art in Chile contains sections on methods used in rock art studies; chronologies and geographical distribution of rock art; function and meaning; and inventories and conservation. Coverage concentrates on Chile but includes Argentina and other South American countries. In her introduction, Grete Mostny observes that greatest progress in rock art studies had been from an anthropological perspective, neglecting aesthetic evaluation.

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• Berenguer Rodríguez, José, and Francisco Gallardo Ibañez, eds. Rock Art in the Andes of Capricorn. Santiago, Chile: Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, 1999.

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  Magnificently illustrated with color plates, this book contains two chapters on the valleys of the upper Loa and Salado Rivers in northern Chile and one on the Antofagasta de la Sierra region in northwestern Argentina. Many of the parietal rock art depictions are of wild and domesticated camelids. The authors discuss the hunting and herding societies that produced these images as well as depictions of llama caravans.

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• Berenguer Rodríguez, José. “Five Thousand Years of Rock Art in the Atacama Desert: Long-Term Environmental Constraints and Symbolic Devices.” In 23º S: Archaeology and Environmental History of the Southern Deserts. Edited by Mike Smith and Paul Hesse, 231–248. Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press, 2005.

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  This chapter presents a synthesis of rock art styles found in the Atacama Desert in a discussion of a changing and unpredictable climate and the culturally specific ideas, beliefs, and values that shaped the production of the rock art. The author discusses the location of panels depicting wild and domesticated camelids in relatively fertile valleys in an extremely arid part of the world.

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• Dudognon, C., and Marcela Sepúlveda. “Rock Art of the Upper Lluta Valley, Northernmost of Chile (South Central Andes): A Visual Approach to Socio-economic Changes between Archaic and Formative Periods (6,000 – 1,500 years BP).” Quaternary International (Online First 1 March 2017).

  DOI: 10.1016/j.quaint.2016.10.009Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This article uses scenes of camelids and humans painted on stone surfaces in rock shelters in the upper Lluta Valley to examine the transition from a hunter-gatherer to a pastoralist way of life. The authors investigate the superimposition of images to argue that depictions of camelids vary little through time, but there are significant changes in the way human beings were depicted as people engaged more intensively in managing camelids.

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• Gallardo, Francisco, and Hugo Yacobaccio. “Wild or Domesticated? Camelids in Early Formative Rock Art of the Atacama Desert (Northern Chile).” Latin American Antiquity 16.2 (2005): 115–130.

  DOI: 10.2307/30042807Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This article, addressing the difficulty in distinguishing between wild and domesticated camelids in northern Chilean rock art, uses measurements on the hindquarters of vicuña and guanaco, which are longer relative to the front quarters than among llamas and alpacas. The authors argue that Early Formative rock art depictions of the Salado River are probably wild camelids. Camelids in the Taira-Tulán style of the Loa and Tulán Quebradas are perhaps llamas.

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• Hostnig, Rainer, Mattias Strecker, and Jean Guffroy, eds. Actas del primer simposio nacional de arte rupestre: Cusco, noviembre 2004. Actes & Mémoires 12. Lima, Peru: Institut français d’études andines, 2007.

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  The contributions in this conference proceedings are organized on a geographical basis, with sections on northern, central, and southern Peru, while others deal with Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina. The subject matter includes engravings and paintings on stone walls in caves and rock shelters, portable stones, and geoglifos made on desert hillslopes. A chapter focuses on the spectacular depiction of camelids on the agricultural terraces at the Peruvian site of Choquek’iraw.

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• Podestá, María Mercedes, and María de Hoyos, eds. Arte en las Rocas: Arte rupestre, menhires y piedras de colores en Argentina. Buenos Aires: Sociedad Argentina de Antropología, 2000.

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  This edited volume publishes the proceedings of a 1997 conference held in Cochabamba in Bolivia, but with a focus on Argentina, discussing engraved and painted rock art on a variety of surfaces. Of interest to the topic of pastoralism are the contributions dealing with northwestern Argentina. The book is dedicated to the archaeologist Carlos J. Gradin. Published in conjunction with Asociación Amigos del Instituto de Nacional de Pensamiento Latinoamericano.

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• Querejazu Lewis, Roy, ed. Arte rupestre colonial y republicano de Bolivia y países vecinos. Contribuciones al Estudio del Arte Rupestre Sudamericano 3. La Paz: Sociedad de Investigación del Arte Rupestre de Bolivia, 1992.

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  An edited volume dedicated to the study of figurative and nonfigurative rock art dating from the colonial and republican periods, mainly in Bolivia but also in Argentina, Chile, Peru, and Brazil. Authors discuss the character of the images, which include persons on horseback, quadrupeds, the devil, and a variety of other depictions in the context of the imposition of Christianity, ritual activity, iconoclasm, and conflict.

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• Vilches, Flora. “Taira Rock Art: A Powerful Setting for Camelid Herders.” In Kay Pacha: Cultivating Earth and Water in the Andes. Edited by Penelope Dransart, 127–136. BAR International Series 1478. Oxford: Archaeopress, 2006.

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  In this study of camelid and bird iconography in rock shelter panels at Taira, located in a narrow part of the Loa canyon, northern Chile, the author considers the site’s landscape orientations. From the shelter, the western horizon is visible, and she identifies two panels in which the drawings of camelids are morphologically distinct in relation to the others, relating one to the summer and the other to the winter solstice.

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Camelid Herding in the Tiwanaku and Wari States

During the middle of the first millennium CE, two states rose to prominence in the Andes. Tiwanaku, south of Lake Titicaca, Bolivia, exerted political, economic, and religious control in the South-Central Andes between c. 400 and 1000. Similarly, Wari, north of Ayacucho, Peru, came to power in the Central Andes c. 550–900. These two political entities originating in the Andean highlands expanded to control inter-Andean valleys and coastal zones: Tiwanaku in the South-Central Andes and Wari in the Central Andes. Lynch 1983 pinpoints the division between these two regions extending westward from the Nudo de Vilcanota in Peru, between the Sihuas and Tambo Rivers. The Sihuas Valley is one of the areas where, prior to Wari expansion, herders produced notable quantities of white camelid fleece for use in elite garments. During the period of Wari control, a standardized type of tie-dyed tunic was woven from highly prized, all-white camelid warp and weft before being resist-dyed. Camelids as food were also important for feasting. Wari and Tiwanaku elites therefore had access to specialized resources produced by herders, but it is unclear to what extent pastoralist communities existed independently of the state. Note that Browman 1974 (cited under Defining Pastoralism as a Way of Life in the Andes) concludes his study when the Jauja-Huancayo basin came under Wari control. Moore 2012 examines evidence for camelid herding in a mixed economy, not a pastoralist one, on the shore of Lake Titicaca prior to Tiwanaku expansion. Finucane, et al. 2006 examines bone remains from Conchopata in the Wari heartland for evidence of camelids’ diet. The authors suggest a group of camelids consumed C₃ photosynthetic pathway plants. These animals would have ranged on vegetation available in the highlands. Another group, they argue, was corralled, fed on maize fodder, and their movements restricted within the constraints of seasonal crop production because they were given C₄ foods. Recent research, however, indicates that maize is not the only C₄ plant that would have been available, and other plants might have been involved. Meddens 1989 discusses evidence for camelid management at two sites located at different stages in Wari expansion on the margins of the area it controlled. Pomeroy 2013 investigates the robusticity of human skeletal remains to explore changes in mobility related to long-distance trading from San Pedro de Atacama during Tiwanaku times and afterward. It appears that the pastoralism associated with hunting that had previously prevailed in the puna was being replaced by more recent pastoralisms, a process that has been noted for other parts of the world.

• Finucane, Brian, Patricia Maita Agurto, and William H. Isbell. “Human and Animal Diet at Conchopata, Peru: Stable Isotope Evidence for Maize Agriculture and Animal Management Practices during the Middle Horizon.” Journal of Archaeological Science 33 (2006): 1766–1776.

  DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2006.03.012Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This report on stable isotope analysis is based on human and animal bones excavated at Conchopata in the Ayacucho Valley, Peru (550–1000 CE). Analysis of the camelid bones produced evidence for two groups, based on differences in δ¹³C values, attributed to contrasting herd management practices. One camelid group was pastured on C₃ photosynthetic pathway plants in grasslands, and the other on C₄ plants, which the authors take to be maize.

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• Lynch, Thomas F. “Camelid Pastoralism and the Emergence of Tiwanaku Civilization in the South-Central Andes.” World Archaeology 15.1 (1983): 1–14.

  DOI: 10.1080/00438243.1983.9979881Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The author reviews theories offered by Browman and Murra. He suggests herding and trading routes in the Puna de Atacama connecting ancient economic enclaves of highland populations in the coastal valleys of the far north of Chile provide the means for explaining Tiwanaku expansion at various places in the region, giving it coherence as a cultural area.

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• Meddens, Frank. “Implications of Camelid Management and Textile Production for Huari.” In The Nature of Wari: A Reappraisal of the Middle horizon Period in Peru. Edited by R. M. Czwarno, F. M. Meddens, and A. Morgan, 146–165. BAR International Series 525. Oxford: Archaeopress, 1989.

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  This chapter compares the Middle Horizon sites of Yako (in the Chicha/Soras valley) and Tajra Chullo (in the Virginiyoc canyon), both in Peru and located on the margins of the Wari state, at distinct moments as it expanded southward. Camelid footprints are carved into a rock pathway at Tajra Chullo. The author argues that these sites served to administer camelid production, especially for their fleece.

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• Moore, Katherine M. “Grace under Pressure: Responses to Changing Environments by Herders and Fishers in the Formative Lake Titicaca Basin, Bolivia.” In Sustainable Lifeways: Cultural Persistence in an Ever-Changing Environment. Edited by Naomi F. Miller, Katherine M. Moore, and Kathleen Ryan, 244–272. Penn Museum International Research Conferences 3. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012.

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  This chapter examines fishing and camelid herding in a mixed fishing-cum-agropastoral economy when communities on the shore of Lake Titicaca responded to periodic environmental stress as the lake receded during arid periods. Continuity in evidence for human occupation from c. 3500 BP indicates that fishing persisted in the Taraco peninsula despite marked declines in water levels. Moore discusses the ability of the different camelids to tolerate droughts.

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• Pomeroy, Emma. “Biomechanical Insights into Activity and Long Distance Trade in the South-Central Andes (AD 500–1450).” Journal of Archaeological Science 40 (2013): 3129–3140.

  DOI: 10.1016/j.jas.2013.04.019Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Equipment used in llama caravanning found among the grave goods of individuals in San Pedro de Atacama, Pica and the Azapa Valley, northern Chile, is discussed in the light of Pomeroy’s analysis of human skeletal remains. People during the period 500–1000 CE had less robust lower limbs than their successors during the period 1000–1450 CE, suggesting they were less mobile and that their successors probably had greater involvement in long-distance trade.

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The Challenge of Ecological Complementarity (“El Archipiélago Vertical”)

The historian John V. Murra crafted the model of ecological complementarity, in which people exploit ecological zones at different altitudes, from his study of colonial archives and court records, especially those relating to Chupaychu people of Huanúco and Lupaqa people of Chucuito in Peru, and from his knowledge of classic texts in anthropology. His publications are numerous. Selected here are Murra 1965, describing camelid herding during the period of Inca domination, and two papers published in Andean Ecology and Civilization (Murra 1985a, Murra 1985b). Murra describes ecological complementarity, or the control that an ethnic group maintained simultaneously over geographically discontinuous ecological zones, as an “achievement” and an “ideal,” making it possible to sustain large populations in puna environments supported by “Andean agriculture.” A key to his deliberate choice of wording can be found in Murra 1965, where he argues herding in the Andes did not take the form of specialized pastoralism, but belonged within a larger agrarian system. He declares: “It should be noted that no separate pastoral economy or nomadism, away from tuber agriculture, had developed anywhere in the Andes.” This wording is one of the reasons why it has taken so long for pastoralism to be recognized as a way of life in the Andes. Some authors accept Murra’s theory. Tomoeda 1985, for example, discusses relations between pastoralists in the puna of Apurímac, Peru, and neighbors occupying a lower ecological zone within an overall agricultural frame of reference. Dedenbach Salazar-Sáenz 1990 provides rich detail on Inca exploitation of camelids. Others question the theory. Neilsen 2009 argues that not only was interregional circulation of goods common in the region of the “Tripartite Frontier” between what is now Bolivia, Chile, and Argentina, but it was also interethnic in character. Van Buren 1996 does not focus on pastoralism per se, but challenges the assumption that vertical archipelagos were traditional adaptations. Some authors avoid using “pastoralism” by proposing alternative terms; Lynch 1983 (cited under Camelid Herding in the Tiwanaku and Wari States), for example, refers to “Andean transhumance.” The term “agropastoralism” is employed frequently but, unless carefully defined (see Perales Munguía’s contribution to Capriles and Tripcevich 2016, under Spatial Approaches to the Study of Pastoralism in the Andes), it can be a catch-all word. What Murra fails to tell his readers is that there are many permutations of pastoralism. Some of the classic pastoralists of the world, such as the Nuer of East Africa, grow millet. Nomadic peoples of the Zagros Mountains cultivate fruit trees. The challenge, instead, is to understand how the people being studied understand/understood the relationships between their herding, their herd animals, and the land that sustained them all.

• Dedenbach Salazar-Sáenz, Sabine. Inka pachaq llamanpa willaynin: Uso y crianza de los camélidos en la época incaica. Bonner Amerikanistiche Studien 16. Bonn: Seminar für Völkerkunde, 1990.

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  This historical and linguistic study uses a range of documentary sources (16th- and 17th-century dictionaries, Spanish chronicles and texts by authors of native descent) to look back to the Inca period. The author discusses wild and domesticated camelids’ multifaceted roles in relation to herding and hunting practices, classificatory terminology, fleece colors and bird associations, mythological traditions, and the sacrifice of camelids as a form of communication with divinities.

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• Murra, John V. “Herds and Herders in the Inka State.” In Man, Culture and Animals. Edited by Anthony Leeds and Andrew P. Vayda, 185–216. AAAS Publication 78. Washington, DC: American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1965.

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  This study of camelid herding during the period of Inca domination stresses the importance of llamas as beasts of burden and alpacas as providers of fleece, while both supplied meat, blood, bones for tools, leather, sinews, and dung. It discusses the existence of herds “owned” by the Inca state and by certain shrines. In the light of the documentary evidence, Murra argues that herding formed part of an agrarian economy.

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• Murra, John V. “‘El Archipiélago Vertical’ Revisited.” In Andean Ecology and Civilization: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Andean Ecological Complementarity; Papers from Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium No 91. Edited by Shozo Masuda, Izumi Shimada, and Craig Morris, 3–13. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985a.

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  The author draws a contrast between trade and commerce that operated in Mesoamerica and systems of reciprocity and redistribution that characterized the Andes. Murra summarizes his “vertical archipelago” model and, in order to understand its capacities and functions, he stresses the need to test its limits. He urges researchers to take into account historical and geographical factors.

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• Murra, John V. “The Limits and Limitations of the ‘Vertical Archipelago’ in the Andes.” In Andean Ecology and Civilization: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Andean Ecological Complementarity: Papers from Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium No 91. Edited by Shozo Masuda, Izumi Shimada, and Craig Morris, 15–20. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985b.

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  Murra devised the “vertical archipelago” model to account for the control a single ethnic group maintained over dispersed ecological levels or “islands.” He sees ecological complementarity as a pre-Hispanic achievement, serving as a mechanism through which highland societies from Cajamarca in Peru to Jujuy in Argentina gained access to different ecological niches. Such societies using these discontinuous terrains cultivated produce not suited to their homelands.

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• Neilsen, Axel E. “Pastoralism and the Non-pastoral World in the Late Pre-Columbian History of the Southern Andes (1000–1535).” Nomadic Peoples 13.1 (2009): 17–35.

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  The author critiques Murra’s vertical archipelago theory as a pan-Andean phenomenon predating the period of Inca dominance. Nielsen uses material from the southern part of the South-Central Andes to examine pastoralism and agropastoralism from 1000–1535 CE and argues contra Murra that interethnic caravan trade and other forms of exchange were common in pre-Hispanic times.

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• Tomoeda, Hiroyasu. “The Llama is my Chacra: Metaphor of Andean Pastoralists.” In Andean Ecology and Civilization: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Andean Ecological Complementarity; Papers from Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium No 91. Edited by Shozo Masuda, Izumi Shimada, and Craig Morris, 277–299. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985.

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  The author examines interactions between agricultural and pastoralist communities in the Apurimac region, southern Peru. Maize is cultivated by the former, accompanied by small numbers of cattle and sheep, while the latter concentrate on camelid herding with the cultivation of some tubers. Hiroyasu examines discrepancies in the value of products bartered between the groups, ties of friendship (reporting that marriage alliances are inconceivable), and the Ayllusqa ritual celebrated by pastoralists in Chicurumi.

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• Van Buren, Mary. “Rethinking the Vertical Archipelago: Ethnicity, Exchange, and History in the South Central Andes.” American Anthropologist, n.s., 98.1 (1996): 338–351.

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  This article evaluates Murra’s “vertical archipelagos” in an examination of Lupaqa agricultural colonies during the 16th century. Focusing on the interests and strategies of different groups in Lupaqa society, it questions the assumption that vertical archipelagos were culturally stable adaptations persisting through time. It addresses Lupaqa participation in a changing colonial context, especially in relation to Torata Alta, in the upper Osmore drainage, Peru, approximately 175 kilometers southwest of the Lupaqa capital, Chucuito.

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Documentary Sources in the Study of Pastoralism in the Andes

Authors cited in this section combine historical and anthropological approaches to explore relations between humans and herd animals. One of the most important sources for the study of herding in the 16th century is the report the inspector Garci Diez de San Miguel compiled in 1567 on the Aymara and Uru inhabitants of the seven camelid-rich provinces of the Lupaqa kingdom. A 1568 copy of the document along with a census dated 1574 was published in Diez de San Miguel 1964. The inspection contains information concerning the subsistence economy of towns in the Hanansaya and Urinsaya moieties of each province. The census supplements this information by naming people (not just leaders), and the number of llamas and alpacas they owned. Assadourian 1995 uses the inspection to address the expansion of mercantile activity in the Andes. The chapter contains a good discussion of how highland people were pressed into spinning and weaving for no direct payment at a time when Spanish clothing was being introduced for sale to wealthy natives and chiefs. The study Duviols 1973 is based on 17th-century documents naming original inhabitants in central Peru as huari and newcomers as llacuaz. Duviols identifies the former as agriculturalists who venerated the sun and mainly grew maize, while llacuaz venerated lightning and established themselves in the highlands as pastoralists. This article challenges archaeologists to find material evidence for the movements of pastoralists (see Parsons, et al. 2000 and Parsons, et al. 2013, cited under Spatial Approaches to the Study of Pastoralism in the Andes). Rostworowski de Diez Canseco 1985 also comments on the identity of llacuaz in Cajamarca and Piura. On a matter of factual accuracy, note that Duviols lists camelid milk among the products traded by llacuaz. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that camelids were milked in the past, and they are not milked in the present. Gade 2013, by a historical geographer, gives a fascinating explanation why colonial-period textual accounts and visual images resorted to sheep terminology when mentioning camelids. Another sort of misperception is considered by Mason 2009, which discusses a group of images possessing “family resemblances” in depicting camelids with hoofed rear feet and clawed front feet. Medinaceli 2010 characterizes pastoralist societies on the basis of collective mobility, arguing that the use of llamas as beasts of burden in the mining economy of the colonial period enabled pastoralists to act as cultural mediators. Bolton 2007 demonstrates how documentary evidence can be combined with ethnographic research to explore pastoralists’ fraught relationships with state functionaries.

• Assadourian, Carlos Sempat. “Exchange in the Ethnic Territories between 1530 and 1567: The Visitas of Huánuco and Chucuito.” In Ethnicity, Markets, and Migration in the Andes: At the Crossroads of History and Anthropology. Edited by Brooke Larson, Olivia Harris, and Enrique Tandeter, 101–134. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1995.

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  This chapter on changes in the political economy during early colonial Peru uses two colonial inspections (visitas) to examine the economic exploitation of native peoples. Assadourian characterizes economic exchange in Huánuco as “circulation among direct producers.” He summarizes Lupaqa economic conditions, based on the Chucuito inspection, as a combination of “horizontal trade” with a “vertical archipelago.”

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• Bolton, Maggie. “Counting Llamas and Accounting for People: Livestock, Land and Citizens in Southern Bolivia.” Sociological Review 55.1 (2007): 5–21.

  DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-954X.2007.00680.xSave Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Documentary sources and ethnographic fieldwork in Sud Lípez, Bolivia, provide Bolton with two cases where livestock censuses resulted in struggles between local pastoralists and officials. One is a late colonial situation concerning taxation, and the other a present-day attempt to attract foreign aid. She argues that pastoralists consider censuses to challenge their claims to be regarded as originarios (members of “original” communities) holding land in common to which they are entitled.

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• Diez de San Miguel, Garci. Visita hecha a la Provincia de Chucuito por Garci Diez de San Miguel en el año 1567: Versión paleográfica de la Visita y una biografía del visitador por Waldemar Espinoza Soriano; Padrón de los mil indios ricos de la Provincia de Chucuito en el año 1574. Lima: Casa de la Cultura del Perú, 1964.

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  This book, based on a manuscript dated to 1568, contains the text of a visita (inspection) of the Province of Chucuito, including the inspector’s instructions, the questions put to local leaders (caciques), quipocamayos (keepers of quipus), elder people, and people of European descent, along with their replies. Also included is a census prepared by Fray Pedro Gutiérrez Flores in 1574. The editor adds a biography of the inspector, a list of sources, and a final chapter by Murra.

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• Duviols, Pierre. “Huari y llacuaz: Agricultores y pastores; Un dualismo prehispánico de oposición y complementaridad.” Revista del Museo Nacional 39 (1973): 153–191.

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  This study of 17th-century documents discusses ethnic groups known as llacuaz and huari in central Peru. Huaris are described as original occupants of the land, and llacuaces as newcomers. Duviols identifies huaris primarily as maize agriculturalists and llacuaces primarily as pastoralists. He uses a pedigree of descendants from a divinized ancestor called Carhua Huanca to calculate that llacuaz communities migrated into the Cajatambo highlands later in the 14th century.

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• Gade, Daniel W. “Llamas and Alpacas as ‘Sheep’ in the Colonial Andes: Zoogeography Meets Eurocentrism.” Journal of Latin American Geography 12.2 (2013): 221–243.

  DOI: 10.1353/lag.2013.0009Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This article examines the circumstances that encouraged 16th- and 17th-century Europeans to apply the Spanish terms oveja and carnero to llamas and alpacas. The development of scientific classification in the middle of the 18th century led to the widespread recognition that llamas and alpacas are members of the camel family; the terms “llama” and “alpaca” used now are derived from original terms employed in Andean languages.

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• Mason, Peter. Before Disenchantment: Images of Exotic Animals and Plants in the Early Modern World. London: Reaktion Books, 2009.

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  This book is based on a study of 16th- and 17th-century images from texts on natural history. Chapter 6, entitled “The Camel-sheep,” discusses depictions of camelids with characteristic two-digit feet. A series of images, traced back to a Brazilian prototype, shows camelids with rear feet as hooves and front feet as having four claws. Mason discusses faulty correspondences between what European witnesses observed and the visual images they devised.

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• Medinaceli, Ximena. Sariri: Los llameros y la construcción de la sociedad colonial. Lima, Peru: Plural Editores, 2010.

  DOI: 10.4000/books.ifea.6344Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Medinaceli addresses trading relationships in the interchange of salt, coca, and herd animals, as well as the contribution llameros (llama drovers) made to the mining economy in colonial times. She argues pastoralist societies played an important role as cultural mediators in their relationships with agriculturalists and urban residents. The focus is on the regions of Potosí and Oruro in Bolivia.

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• Rostworowski de Diez Canseco, María. “Patronyms with the Consonant F in the Guarangas of Cajamarca.” In Andean Ecology and Civilization: An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Andean Ecological Complementarity; Papers from Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research Symposium No 91. Edited by Shozo Masuda, Izumi Shimada, and Craig Morris, 401–421. Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1985.

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  This chapter discusses a visita (inspection) of Cajamarca, northern Peru, in the 1570s to establish the numbers of inhabitants and taxpayers in the area. The records demonstrate that some groups of people were recognizable as having north coast origin (because the consonant F occurs in north coast languages). Some outsiders living in Colquemarca are identified as llacuaz people. Documents on idolatry identify these people as agriculturalists, not pastoralists.

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Ethnoarchaeological Approaches to Pastoralism in the Andes

Ethnoarchaeologists conduct their own fieldwork among living people. Authors included here have worked with pastoralists on research agendas focusing on unresolved problems in the interpretation of archaeological evidence. Their research casts light on the adaptations of pastoralists in both the past and the present. Yacobaccio, et al. 1998 explain how ethnoarchaeologists take causality into account. The authors use study material from Susques, northwestern Argentina, to explore problems concerning the predominance of different age categories and skeletal parts observed in excavated assemblages of animal bones, which vary from one archaeological site to another. Likewise, Kuznar 1995 gives attention to factors such as bone attrition, which can make it difficult to identify pastoralist sites in the archaeological record. Kuznar also emphasizes the importance of corrals in a consideration of the visibility and durability of surviving evidence at sites used by pastoralists in the past. Because bone remains are commonly encountered in archaeological deposits, some ethnoarchaeologists regard meat as the “primary” reason for domesticating camelids, relegating fleece and the labor service of llamas as beasts of burden to the status of “secondary products.” This notion of “secondary products,” which Aldenderfer espouses in Kuznar 2001, is borrowed from archaeological evidence concerning Eurasia, especially as related to the domestication of sheep, which are supposed not to have had a coat that could be spun until well into the Neolithic period. Sheep, of course, are not native to the Andes, and wild camelids have a fleece that is suitable for spinning. There is much direct evidence for the spinning of camelid fleece surviving from early hunter-gatherer sites in the South-Central Andes. Regarding fleece as secondary in a domestication process puts researchers who study fleece, yarn, and fabrics into a difficult position. María del Carmen Reigadas, in Kuznar 2001, regards the reproduction of the herd as “primary” and the production of both food and textiles as “secondary.” Her examination of fleece characteristics can now be put into the context of discussions of camelid hybridization in Wheeler, et al. 2006 and Barreta, et al. 2012 (both cited under Domestication of South American Camelids). While discussions of the material record in the form of artifacts often dominate ethnoarchaeological interpretations, some authors adopt social perspectives. Examples are Neilsen, in Kuznar 2001, who considers the organizing principles of caravan expeditions and potential archaeological expressions, and Dransart 2011, which explores the problem of using analogies based on present-day changing social situations to understand human–herd animal relations in the past.

• Dransart, Penelope. “Social Principles of Andean Camelid Pastoralism and Archaeological Interpretations.” In Ethnozooarchaeology: The Present and Past of Human-Animal Relationships. Edited by Umberto Albarella and Angela Trentacoste, 123–130. Oxford: Oxbow Books, 2011.

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  The social principles considered include networks of ownership, patterns of access to pasture grounds, and interactions between the social organization of the herders and their animals. Tracking ethnographically observed changes among pastoralists in Isluga, northern Chile, from the 1980s to the early 21st century, Dransart argues that herding practices and social contexts ultimately affected biological processes of domestication when herders care for successive generations of animals.

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• Kuznar, Lawrence A. Awatimarka: The Ethnoarchaeology of an Andean Herding Community. Fort Worth: Harcourt Brace College, 1995.

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  Ethnoarchaeological methods are used to make inferences in archaeological interpretation. Present-day goat herders in Awatimarka, a pseudonymously named community in the department of Moquegua, Peru, demonstrate how people and herd animals use space in living quarters and corrals. Kuznar applies these findings, particularly those concerning the attrition of bone, to the study of archaeological remains from late Archaic Period layers at the site of Asana, in the Osmore Basin.

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• Kuznar, Lawrence A., ed. Ethnoarchaeology of Andean South America: Contributions to Archaeological Method and Theory. Ann Arbor, MI: International Monographs in Prehistory, 2001.

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  The book is based on research conducted in Argentina, Bolivia, and Peru and is organized into sections on method and theory, settlement patterns, craft production, and taphonomy. Emphasis is given to the adaptive strategies adopted by pastoralists and their activities, including settlement patterns associated with herding, ritual practices, caravan trade, weaving, and butchery.

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• Yacobaccio, Hugo D., Celina M. Madero, and Marcela P. Malmierca. Etnoarqueología de pastores surandinos. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Grupo Zooarqueología de Camélidos, 1998.

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  This book uses a present-day pastoralist economy in Susques, northwestern Argentina, to investigate how herding activities might generate the patterning seen in the archaeological record. Chapters deal with settlement patterns, herding strategies, and the butchery and consumption of llamas, goats, and sheep. The authors apply their findings to archaeologically excavated faunal remains to help explain variations in the predominance of different age categories and skeletal parts between archaeological sites.

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Spatial Approaches to the Study of Pastoralism in the Andes

By considering the shaping of spaces as a dynamic process through time, the authors listed in this section investigate how pastoralists and their herd animals in past and present societies construct their environments as conceptual worlds. Approaches come from various disciplines, including cultural geography, anthropology, archaeology, and history. Seasonal mobility through space involves accessing pasture grounds, whether horizontally in one ecological zone or vertically over longer distances (see also examples listed under Defining Pastoralism as a Way of Life in the Andes). Abeledo, in Benedetti and Tomasi 2014, considers interethnic caravan trading with llamas and donkeys to provide an alternative to Murra’s theory of ecological complementarity. Abeledo’s discussion of historical trading relations made by the inhabitants of Santa Rosa de los Pastos Grandes, Province of Salta, Argentina, reveals spatial and temporal conceptualizations, as instanced by people’s references to month-long expeditions made in the time of fruit between March and April and the time of grain between July and August. Tripcevich, in Capriles and Tripcevich 2016, accompanied an expedition from Cotahuasi to Apurimac, Peru, with a caravan of llamas bearing a cargo of salt. He carefully tracked the roles taken by the llamas—the main or occasional leaders, those in the middle, or those bringing up the rear. At times, movements of herd animals are curtailed, as shown in Rodas Arano 2014, a study of the confinement of the llama libre within fenced-in pasture grounds following the recent implementation of policies to enclose land in Carangas, Bolivia. The situation on the Bolivian side of the border differs from that in nearby Isluga, Chile, where pastoralists herd their llamas and alpacas in communally held pasture lands. Isluga is one of the communities discussed by Gundermann 1984, which questions Murra’s thesis of ecological complementarity on the grounds that in the puna of northern Chile there is continuity, not discontinuity, in the ecological use of space. Pastoralists use that space to produce livestock rather than complementary products from discontinuous islands of territory. One should note the orthography used in Gundermann 1984 for Aymara terms does not conform to that used by Aymara linguists (e.g., bofedal is juqhu in Aymara dictionaries rather than hok’o, as it appears in the article). Lands occupied by herders can be perceived negatively by outsiders, as seen in Poole 1987. From an archaeological perspective, Parsons, et al. 2000 and Parsons, et al. 2013 attempt to characterize mobile llacuaz peoples, and Lane 2006 examines the corralling of water to extend pasture grounds.

• Benedetti, Alejandro, and Jorge Tomasi, eds. Espacialidades altoandinas: Nuevos aportes desde la Argentina. 2 vols. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Editorial de la Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires, 2014.

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  Written from different social science perspectives, the contributions focus on spatiotemporal issues in high-altitude communities in northwestern Argentina. The first of three main strands concerns how the movement of people, animals, and goods configures the use of space, including chapters on movement as a characteristic of pastoralist practices. The second strand considers senses of space in the maintenance of social worlds, and the third explores spatial dimensions in histories of conflict. Volume 1: Miradas hacia lo local, lo comunitario y lo doméstico; Volume 2: Interacciones con el “mundo de afuera.”

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• Capriles, José M., and Nicholas Tripcevich, eds. The Archaeology of Andean Pastoralism. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2016.

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  This edited volume, with chapters on pastoralist societies and on herding in mixed economies, presents findings of research conducted in Peru and Bolivia. Moore’s contribution on the biology of camelids and deer covers a wider geographical extent. Contributors treat pastoralism as an economic system and as a social network involving herders, herd animals, and divinities. A landscape perspective provides a theme unifying many of the chapters.

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• Gundermann, Hans K. “Ganadería aymara, ecología y forrajes: Evaluación regional de una actividad productiva andina.” Revista Chungara 12 (August 1984): 99–124.

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  The author presents a geographical overview of the Chilean highlands between Visviri and the northern edge of the Salar de Atacama, and descriptions of the vegetation foraged by camelids. Gundermann contrasts the annual management of herds in Isluga and Cariquima (highlands of Iquique) with the highlands of Arica and the high valleys of the River Salado basin.

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• Lane, Kevin. “Through the Looking Glass: Re-assessing the Role of Agro-pastoralism in the North-Central Andean Highlands.” World Archaeology 38.3 (2006): 493–510.

  DOI: 10.1080/00438240600813806Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The author defines agropastoralism as a shifting phenomenon and a “multi-resourced pastoralism that involves agriculture.” His survey of the Chorrillos side valley, which feeds into the Chaclancayo River, in the Pamparomas District, north-central highlands of Peru, demonstrates the presence of water dams, reservoirs, and silt dams. He argues some silt dams were used to create bofedales for herding.

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• Parsons, Jeffrey R., Charles M. Hastings, and Ramiro Matos Mendieta, eds. Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Upper Mantaro and Tarma Drainages, Junín, Peru. Vol 1, The Tarma-Chinchaycocha Region. Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology 34. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 2000.

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  This, the first of two volumes addressing the environmental, ecological, historical, and ethnographic contexts of sites surveyed during two seasons of fieldwork undertaken for the Junín Archaeological Survey Project in 1975–1976, focuses on the Tarma-Chinchaycocha region. The contributors examine relationships between pastoralist and agricultural economies in response to Duviols’s challenge to provide archaeological characterizations of llacuaz and huari peoples. The chronological scope covers from approximately 500 BC to the mid-16th century.

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• Parsons, Jeffrey R., Charles M. Hastings, and Ramiro Matos Mendieta, eds. Prehispanic Settlement Patterns in the Upper Mantaro and Tarma Drainages, Junín, Peru. Vol 2, The Wanka Region. Memoirs of the Museum of Anthropology 53. Ann Arbor: Museum of Anthropology, University of Michigan, 2013.

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  This, the second of two volumes addressing the environmental, ecological, historical, and ethnographic contexts of sites surveyed during two seasons of fieldwork undertaken for the Junín Archaeological Survey Project in 1975–1976, focuses on the Wanka region. The contributors examine relationships between pastoralist and agricultural economies in response to Duviols’s challenge to provide archaeological characterizations of llacuaz and huari peoples. The chronological scope covers from approximately 500 BC to the mid-16th century.

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• Poole, Deborah A. “Landscapes of Power in a Cattle-Rustling Culture of Southern Andean Peru.” Dialectical Anthropology 12.4 (1987): 367–398.

  DOI: 10.1007/BF00245529Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This article discusses the historical background of cattle rustling in Chumbivilcas, Department of Cuzco, Peru, in a terrain where it is difficult to distinguish between those who maintain the law and those who break it. The author considers the puna as a social space, although city dwellers in Cuzco perceive it to be “empty space,” populated by barely tamed bovine cattle.

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• Rodas Arano, Carla Virginia. “El cercado de la llama libre: Transformaciones en el territorio comunitario de Curahuara de Carangas (prov. Sajama, dpto. Oruro, Bolivia 2007–2013).” Bulletin de l’Institut français d’études andines 43.2 (2014): 355–367.

  DOI: 10.4000/bifea.5289Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This study of territorial organization in Curahuara de Carangas examines how pastoralists accustomed to herding llamas in extensive territorial networks have changed their use of land in response to development plans dating from 2007 and 2011. Herders now fence land; the intensive use of parcels known as sayañas results in interfamily conflicts. Instead of providing common access to land, these plots are restricted for use by individual families.

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Wild Camelid Fleece, Local Development, and International Markets

Studies on the commercialization of fleece shorn from wild animals present important insights into the exploitation of common resources and socially constructed notions of ownership under pastoralist economies. The General Introduction defined pastoralism according to the extensive use pastoralists and their herds make of rangelands. Frequently, pastoralists have common access to rangelands (for exceptions, see Gundermann 1984 and Rodas Arano 2014, cited under Spatial Approaches to the Study of Pastoralism in the Andes). In Andean communities, family units herd the individually owned animals, which are privately owned, but the pastures on which they feed tend to be common property. Unlike animals cared for by human owners, Aymara- and Quechua-speaking herders recognize powerful divinities, the uywiris, apus, and Coquena (see Ethnographies of Pastoralist Communities and Ritual Practices in Pastoralist Communities, and Baldo, et al. 2013) as owners of wild guanaco and vicuña. During Inca times, the use of vicuña fleece was restricted to the nobility (see Garcilaso de la Vega 1966, cited under Hunting to Herding Native American Camelids). Numbers, especially of vicuña, dropped greatly during the colonial period due to overhunting. Lichtenstein 2010 notes that after little more than a century of European domination they had become dangerously close to extinction. The 1979 Convention for the Conservation and Management of the Vicuña, signed by the governments of Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Ecuador, and Peru, ushered in a period in which numbers have increased noticeably. Because vicuñas live at altitudes in excess of 3,500 meters above sea level, they share pasture grounds used by pastoralists and publications in this section provide examples of the use of a wild resource (fleece) obtained in rangelands to which pastoralists have access. The Vicuña Convention recognized local people’s responsibilities for conserving vicuña populations and envisaged the implementation of schemes exploiting the fleece. Gordon 2009 observes that international political consensus was strong regarding the initial stages of conservation but has weakened with the implementation of projects involving such schemes. Lichtenstein 2010 reports that in Argentina and Chile vicuña are considered res nullius—animals allegedly belonging to no one because they were never appropriated. In Peru, local communities were given usufruct rights, but large companies then gained access to vicuña management when rights were extended to other persons. Bolivia, in contrast, granted exclusive rights to local community members. Baldo, et al. 2013 is an example of an instruction manual produced to help local people in Argentina conserve vicuñas and harvest their fleece for sale in external markets. Lichtenstein and Carmanchahi 2012 discuss guanaco fiber production.

• Baldo, Jorge, Yanina Arzamendia, and Bibiana Vilá. La vicuña: Manual para su conservación y uso sustentable. Buenos Aires, Argentina: Consejo Nacional de Investigacions Científicas y Tecnicas (CONICET), 2013.

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  Attractively illustrated, this manual offers instruction to interested persons in the conservation of vicuñas and the sustainable use of their fleece. It describes the social organization of vicuñas, provides a rationale for concepts such as sustainable development, and explains relevant legislation. Part of the manual consists of practical guidance for planning and carrying out a chaku by intercepting vicuñas, shearing their fleece, and releasing them back into the wild.

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• Gordon, Iain J., ed. The Vicuña: The Theory and Practice of Community-Based Wildlife Management. New York: Springer, 2009.

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  The contributors to this book address local participation by herding communities, national legislation, and international policies in the sustainable use of vicuñas, a wild animal. Chapters focus on a range of issues, including the biology and genetics of vicuñas, histories of human-vicuña interaction, and environmental education. The book aims to disseminate specialist research to inform the commercial use of vicuña fleece while respecting the need to protect endangered animals.

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• Lichtenstein, Gloria. “Vicuña Conservation and Poverty Alleviation? Andean Communities and International Fibre Markets.” International Journal of the Commons 4.1 (2010): 100–121.

  DOI: 10.18352/ijc.139Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  Using fieldwork findings from Peru and Argentina, the author discusses commercial sales of fleece from live-shorn vicuñas in Andean countries in schemes designed to involve local people with vicuña conservation. Different types of project are considered, based on schemes involving the capture and release of vicuñas or rearing them under captive management. Lichtenstein draws attention to the low incomes of local people harvesting the fleece and the high cost of products paid by affluent consumers.

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• Lichtenstein, Gloria, and Pablo D. Carmanchahi. “Guanaco Management by Pastoralists in the Southern Andes.” Pastoralism: Research, Policy and Practice 2 (2012): 1–16.

  DOI: 10.1186/2041-7136-2-16Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This article reports on a project in La Payunia Provincial Reserve in the south of Mendoza Province, Argentina, to conserve migratory guanaco, resulting in continuous year-on-year improvements in their numbers. A co-operative was established among local people to harvest guanaco fiber, to conduct community tourism, and revegetate land with native plant species.

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Pastoralism in the Puna, Climate Variability, and Climate Change

In this section, many of the authors use the format of a report in a scientific journal to disseminate their findings. Perhaps due to the tight word allowances, there is a tendency not to define how the term “pastoralism” is being used, as though the meaning is self-evident. Noted elsewhere in this bibliography, however, there are pastoralisms and pastoralisms. This observation is likely to acquire greater significance as climate change makes itself more obvious in the Andes. The South-Central Andes is much more arid than the Central Andes, and it should be noted that the puna has been classified in zones as wet, dry, and salt, depending on the rainfall, most of which should fall during the austral summer season. Of interest is that Göbel 2008 refers to the period between December and March in northwestern Argentina as the “potential rainy season.” Vagaries in weather patterns are not new and they feature in discussions of why people started to adopt pastoralism in the distant past. In this final section, however, the focus is on the 21st century. Göbel demonstrates how environmental and climatic unpredictability in Huancar are inseparable from social volatilities such as outward migration. At the northern end of the puna, in the Cordillera Negra in Peru, Lane 2006 (under Spatial Approaches to the Study of Pastoralism in the Andes) notes that high-altitude terrains have suffered relative depopulation, leaving few people to maintain systems to irrigate pastures. Verzijli and Guerrero Quispe 2013 regard the practice of irrigating wet pasturelands (bofedales) discussed by several of the authors listed in this bibliography as a system “that nobody sees.” Hence social and environmental changes occur and it is difficult to extricate the two. Climate change on the local level is a phenomenon that pastoralists and their herd animals experience from being there as it happens—they do not have the luxury of being detached observers from afar. Postigo, et al. 2008 and López-i-Gelats, et al. 2015 report on research conducted by teams of researchers using a mixture of quantitative and qualitative methods to consider the effects of such changes, and how people attempt to adapt their economic practices. The authors of Yager, et al. 2008 undertook a botanical study to examine what happened to the coverage provided by plant species under different weather conditions and when trampled by herds in the Sajama National Park, Bolivia. The examples of research listed here signal possibilities for future research directions in the study of pastoralism in the Andes.

• Göbel, Barbara. “Dangers, Experience, and Luck: Handling Uncertainty in the Andes.” In Culture and the Changing Environment: Uncertainty, Cognition, and Risk Management in Cross-Cultural Perspective. Edited by Michael J. Casimir, 221–250, Oxford: Berghahn, 2008.

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  This study of the interface between a pastoralist society and the environment in Huancar, Jujuy, Argentina, emphasizes that instabilities are the norm. The author distinguishes between her approach and that of other authors who present human existence in nature as being harmonious. She explores how herdswomen attempt to accumulate potential for what herders call suerte (luck) in relation to culturally bound perceptions of herding in a risky environment.

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• López-i-Gelats, F., J. L. Contreras Paco, R. Huilcas Huayra, O. D. Siguas Robles, E. C. Quispe Peña, and J. Bartolomé Filella. “Adaptation Strategies of Andean Pastoralist Households to Both Climate and Non-climate Changes.” Human Ecology 43 (2015): 267–282.

  DOI: 10.1007/s10745-015-9731-7Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The authors of this article examine household economies in the Department of Huancavelica, Peru, at altitudes between 3,800 and 5,000 meters above sea level. They identify four “clusters” of pastoralism with different characteristics in respect to (1) access to land, herd animals, and labor patterns; (2) commercial activities; (3) other income-generating activities; and (4) the extent to which households produce textiles.

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• Postigo, J. C., K. R. Young, and K. A. Crews. “Change and Continuity in a Pastoralist Community in the High Peruvian Andes.” Human Ecology 36 (2008): 535–551.

  DOI: 10.1007/s10745-008-9186-1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  This report presents findings based on changes in land use and cover obtained from satellite imagery of Huancavelica, in the central highlands of Peru. Between 1990 and 2000, deglaciation was accompanied by increases in areas of barren soil, some colonized by wetland vegetation. The authors investigate the capacities of camelid and sheep herders for adapting to socioenvironmental changes, noting economic differences between households with larger and smaller numbers of livestock.

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• Verzijli, Andres, and Silvano Guerrero Quispe. “The System Nobody Sees: Irrigated Wetland Management and Alpaca Herding in the Peruvian Andes.” Mountain Research and Development 33.3 (2013): 280–293.

  DOI: 10.1659/MRD-JOURNAL-D-12-00123.1Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The article examines how herders move their herd animals from one area of pasture to another in Carhuancho Centro (Huancavelica, Peru), a community where people successfully protested against plans to extract irrigation water through an interceptor drain for supplying agribusinesses elsewhere. Emphasizing that bofedal maintenance depends on local water governance in response to climate and population change, the authors describe methods used for irrigating bofedales to encourage pasture growth and limit over-irrigation.

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• Yager, Karina, H. Resnikowski, and S. Halloy. “Grazing and Cimatic Variability in Sajama National Park, Bolivia (Pastoreo y variabilidad climática en el Parque Nacional de Sajama, Bolivia).” Pirineos 163 (2008): 97–109.

  DOI: 10.3989/pirineos.2008.v163.25Save Citation »Export Citation » Share Citation »

  The authors conducted research in humid and dry years (2006 and 2007) to present a botanical study of pasture plants palatable to herd animals in five indigenous pastoralist communities within the Sajama National Park, Bolivia. They report the number and cover of plant species in areas disturbed by herding. Seasonal variation and climate change, and fluctuations in the availability of moist pastures, suggest that carrying capacity is being exceeded.

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