Reinvention and Colonialism in the Central Andes: The Archaeology of Huarochirí (Peru) through the Inka and Spanish Periods

Carla Hernández Garavito
Anthropology
UC Santa Cruz

“Reinvention and Colonialism in the Central Andes” builds upon results from archaeological excavations, the revision of archival sources, and spatial modeling to investigate the experience of the people of Huarochirí (Lima, Peru) and their engagement with successive waves of colonialism by the Inka and Spanish empires between the 15th and 18th centuries. I use the idea of “reinvention” to center how locals significantly acted upon colonial policy to claim positions of belonging. I focus on “history-making” to discuss the Indigenous appropriation of history, understood in this context as a body of knowledge that legitimizes group identity. Throughout the chapters I argue that, in the face of drastic socio-political changes, the people of Huarochirí turned to their history, creating analogies and shared spaces between local and Inka landscapes and materiality and incorporating written representations and ideas of settled lives to validate their claims in Spanish eyes. The manuscript  moves from speaking about conquering empires to centering the history of Indigenous communities and their telling of how those empires came to be a part of their world.

Image credit: PASL Team (2011).