Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica: Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo–Colombian Area

371 Pages·2020·7.483 MB·English

by  Ernst Halbmayer

AMERINDIAN SOCIO
COSMOLOGIES BETWEEN
THE ANDES, AMAZONIA AND
MESOAMERICA
TOWARD AN ANTHROPOLOGICAL UNDERSTANDING
OF THE ISTHMO-COLOMBIAN AREA
Edited by
Ernst Halbmayer
Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies
between the Andes, Amazonia and
Mesoamerica
This book offers a new anthropological understanding of the socio-
cosmological and ontological characteristics of the Isthmo– Colombian Area,
beyond established theories for Amazonia, the Andes and Mesoamerica.
It focuses on a core region that has been largely neglected by comparative
anthropology in recent decades. Centering on relations between Chibchan
groups and their neighbors, the contributions consider prevailing socio-
cosmological principles and their relationship to Amazonian animism and
Mesoamerican and Andean analogism. Classical notions of area homoge-
neity are reconsidered and the book formulates an overarching proposal for
how to make sense of the heterogeneity of the region’s indigenous groups.
Drawing on original fieldwork and comparative analysis, the volume pro-
vides a valuable anthropological addition to archaeological and linguistic
knowledge of the Isthmo–Colombian Area.
Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at
the Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, University of Marburg,
Germany.
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Technologies, Bodies and Identities on the Move
Karen Fog Olwig, Kristina Grünenberg, Perle Møhl and Anja Simonsen
Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and
Mesoamerica
Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo–
Colombian Area
Edited by Ernst Halbmayer
Mambila Divination
Framing Questions, Constructing Answers
David Zeitlyn
Surfaces
Transformations of Body, Materials and Earth
Edited by Mike Anusas and Cristián Simonetti
Suckling Kinship
More Fluid
Fadwa El Guindi
For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/
Routledge-Studies-in-Anthropology/book-series/SE0724
Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies
between the Andes, Amazonia
and Mesoamerica
Toward an Anthropological
Understanding of the
Isthmo–Colombian Area
Edited by
Ernst Halbmayer
First published 2020
by Routledge
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN
and by Routledge
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Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa
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© 2020 selection and editorial matter, Ernst Halbmayer; individual
chapters, the contributors
The right of Ernst Halbmayer to be identified as the author of the
editorial material, and of the authors for their individual chapters,
has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the
Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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ISBN: 978-0-367-80809-9 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-01048-7 (ebk)
Typeset in Times New Roman
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Contents
List of figures vii
List of tables xi
List of contributors xiii
Acknowledgments xv
PART I
The Isthmo–Colombian Area in context 1
1 Introduction: toward an anthropological understanding of the
area between the Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Amazon 3
ERNST HALBMAYER
PART II
Conceptualizing the Isthmo–Colombian Area from a regional
comparative perspective 35
2 An Amerindian humanism: order and transformation in
Chibchan universes 37
JUAN CAMILO NIÑO VARGAS
3 Languages of the Isthmo–Colombian Area and its southeastern
borderland: Chibchan, Chocoan, Yukpa, and Wayuunaiki 61
MATTHIAS PACHE, SÉRGIO MEIRA, AND COLETTE GRINEVALD
4 Kinship, clanship, and hierarchy in the Isthmo–Colombian Area 88
ERNST HALBMAYER
5 Between Mesoamerica, the Central Andes, and Amazonia:
area conceptions, chronologies, and history 123
CHRISTIANE CLADOS AND ERNST HALBMAYER
vi Contents
6 The golden ones: the human body as reflective metallic surface
in the Isthmo–Colombian Area 158
CHRISTIANE CLADOS
PART III
Case studies: change and continuity in shamanic
and priestly practices and the conception of things,
humans, plants, and animals 179
7 Parents who own lives: relations and persons among the I’ku, a
Chibchan group in Colombia 181
JOSE ARENAS GÓMEZ
8 Tuwancha, “the One Who Knows”: specialists and specialized
knowledge in transhuman communication among the Sokorpa
Yukpa of the Serranía del Perijá, Colombia 205
ANNE GOLETZ
9 The Wounaan haaihí jëeu nʌm ritual with the k'ugwiu:
reinforcing benevolence and preventing calamity 234
CHINDÍO PEÑA ISMARE, JULIA VELÁSQUEZ RUNK,
RITO ISMARE PEÑA, AND CHENIER CARPIO OPUA
10 Things, life, and humans in Guna Yala (Panama): talking
about molagana and nudsugana inside and outside Guna society 257
MÒNICA MARTÍNEZ MAURI
11 Plant ontologies among the Bribri of Talamanca, Costa Rica 279
SCHABNAM KAVIANY
12 The place of livestock in human-non-human
relationship among the Wayuu 303
ALESSANDRO MANCUSO
13 Murderous spirits: shamanic interpretation of armed violence,
suicide, and exhumation in the economy of death of the Emberá
(Chocó, Antioquia, Colombia) 330
ANNE-MARIE LOSONCZY
Index 345
Figures
2.1 Chibcha-speaking societies 40
2.2 Chibchan semantic categorization 42
2.3 Order in the Chibchan world 44
2.4 The transformations of the cosmos 49
3.1 The distribution areas of Chibchan, Chocoan, Yukpa, and
Wayuunaiki. Map created by Arjan Mossel, based on data
from Constenla Umaña (2012, 394) and Simons
and Fennig (2017) 61
4.1 Marriage path over four generations among the U’wa 105
4.2 Marriage in different houses according to generation
and direction 107
5.1 The Circum-Caribbean Area 124
5.2 Chiefdoms of the northern Andes, Central America,
and the Greater Antilles (Steward and Faron 1959, 203);
nomadic hunters and gatherers stippled, tropical-forest
village farmers diagonally hatched 125
5.3 Limits of culture areas 127
5.4 Isthmo–Colombian region; dark shade areas show locations
of Chibchan populations 130
6.1 (left) Nose ornament, Yotoco-Malagana. AD 1–500. Museo
del Oro, Bogotá. Image by Clados 160
6.2 (right) Calima chief, Yotoco Period. AD 100–700/1000.
Image by Clados 160
6.3 (left) Galo Polychrome effigy vessels depicting an aged
kneeling male; arms and legs are wrapped with discs.
Guanacaste-Nicoya, AD 500–800, 14505, Museo Nacional
de Costa Rica. Image by Clados 162
6.4 (right) Strands of beads cover the front of the body.
Muisca, AD 1200–1600, VA 1505. Berlin. Image by Clados 162
6.5 (left) Wrapping the neck with strands of (glass) beads as
seen with the present-day Kuna. Drawing by Clados after a
photograph by Jean-Philippe Soulé, 2001 163
viii Figures
6.6 (right) Wrapping the neck with strands of gold beads.
Quimbaya flask, K VA 501, AD 0–600. Berlin 163
6.7 (left) Necklaces with large animal pendants worn across the
chest. Muisca, AD 1200–1600, VA 1496. Berlin.
Image by Clados 163
6.8 (right) Chief Lacenta wearing six necklaces. Drawing by
Clados after Lionel Wafer’s account “New Voyage and
Description” (1729) 163
6.9 (left) Large-scale chest ornament, stela, Chontales style, El
Gavilán, Nicaragua. AD 800–1200. Image by Clados 164
6.10 (right) Plaque in form of star; star has two central holes for
attachment. Pupiales, Nariño, AD 600–1700. MO 20.822.
Image by Clados 164
6.11 (left) Anthropomorphic variant of Darién pectoral, showing
golden man with large-scale ornaments and weaponry,
Calima region, 100 BC-AD1000. Museum of Fine Arts,
Houston. Image by Clados 166
6.12 (right) Alligator-headed variant of Darién pectoral, top
of the domes show spout-and-bridge bottles (alcarraza).
Probably Ansermanuevo, Cauca Valley, AD 0–600.
MO 6031. Image by Clados 166
6.13 (left) Tairona figure pendant, depicting master of the
universe wearing headdress with semi-circles and eye-
shield. Santa Marta, Magdalena, AD 900–1600. MO
22.802. Image by Clados 168
6.14 (right) Calima diadem with zigzag line arching over an
embossed face, and embossed circles. Yotoco Period,
AD 100–700/1000. MO 4833. Image by Clados 168
6.15 (left) Shipibo cosmogram. Drawing by Clados after
Gebhart-Sayer 1987, 26 168
6.16 (right) Scepter in the shape of the world tree. Calima-
Malagana, AD 1–500. MO 33396. Image by Clados 168
6.17 (left) Effigy ocarina depicting a golden man sitting on a
throne. Tairona, Gayraca style, AD 1300–1500. Image by Clados 172
6.18 (right) Bat-masked stone figure wearing necklaces
composed of a long horizontal bar with hanging vertical
elements. Atlantic Watershed zone, Costa Rica, AD
700–1100. Image by Clados 172
6.19 (left) Ceramic effigy figure showing high-ranking individual
with jadeite bar pectoral. Burial XXXVII-4, Copan, AD
695. Image by Clados 172
6.20 (right) Emberá with chest ornament similar to Classic Maya
jadeite bar pectoral. Drawing by Clados after
Reichel-Dolmatoff 1960 172
8.1 Idealized abstraction of the two manifestations of tuwancha 217
Figures ix
8.2 Idealized abstraction of modes of relations with the
other-than-human realm 222
9.1 A k′ugwiu from the Swedish ethnographer Erland
Nordenskiöld’s 1927 trip to the Río Docordó, Colombia 240
9.2 A k′ugwiu hanging in a dichaardí (round house), 2003 243
9.3 The k′ugwiu ritual from the Wounaan National Congress in
2002 (left) and 2006 (right) 245
9.4 A woman playing the k′ugwiu with a mallet in each hand 246
9.5 Men playing the haaihí jëeu nʌm ritual flutes 248