Heads of State : Icons, Power, and Politics in the Ancient and Modern Andes

List of Illustrations 11 Acknowledgments 15 Introduction 19 Headhunting in the Andes 20 The Models in Play 22 Ancestral and Enemy Heads: Interweaving Identities 26 Heads and the Regeneration of Life 28 The Ancestral Dead, Identity, and Andean Polities 30 Methods and the Organization of the Book 32 PART I THE ETHNOGRAPHY OF ANDEAN HEAD TAKING AND POWER 35 1 Heads in Small-scale Polities 37 Toward a Theory of Heads in Expanding Polities 37 The Fetishism of Heads as Protected Things 44 Heads and the Powers of Regeneration 47 The Nature of These Powers of Regeneration 50 Transformations in Values and the Fetishism of Commodities Revisited 58 Why a Head? 60 Flying Heads 65 2 The Captured Fetish, the Mountain Chest, and Sacrifice 71 The Concentration of a Head's Powers 72 The Counting Boards Called Yupana and the Spirit of Calculation 80 3 Drinking the Power of the Dead 91 Sucking out of a Skull 91 The Patterns of Drinking Pathways 94 Toward an Iconography of Drinking, Social Memory and Warfare 96 Visual Representations on Colonial Qirus of the Potent Energy of Trophy Heads 99 The Space above the Feline Head 103 4 The Nested Power of Modern Andean Hierarchies 107 Personal Heads 108 Initiation Rites 109 Household Heads 110 Gendered Heads and the Parallelism of Warriors and Weavers 114 Ayllu Heads 117 Heads as Holders of Power; Holders of Power as Heads 117 The Vara Staff of Office 121 The Geopolitical Place of Heads in the Major Ayllu Formation and Beyond 124 The Ayllu Political Center 126 The Ritual of Expanding Power Outward: Willja 130 The Ayllu Boundaries 132 From Ayllu Limits to Ayllu Center 132 The Postwar Remaking of Regional Relations between Ayllus 133 The Major Ayllu within a Wider Andean State 137 Early State Bureaucracies and the Management of Heads 139 Weaving and Kipu Practices at the Service of the State 139 Conclusions 143 PART II THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ANDEAN HEAD TAKING AND POWER 147 5 Heads and the Consolidation of Andean Political Power 149 The Dual Political Forces that Patterned Past Community Formation 150 Heads of State 152 Heads and Ancestral Power 154 The Mallki 154 Remembered Bones 156 Heads and Rains 157 Ancestral Heads in Archaeological Settings 161 Rituals Centered around Tombs, Body Parts, and Images of the Dead 163 The titas of Contemporary La Paz 163 Bodily Relations in Architectonic Form 166 6 Heads and Andean Political Change from an Archaeological Perspective 169 The South-Central Andes 169 The South Coast 169 Paracas 169 Nasca 176 The Lake Titicaca Region 182 The Formative Phases 182 The Middle Formative: Chiripa 187 Late Formative' Early Intermediate Period (Tiwanaku I, III): Pukara 190 Middle Horizon Tiwanaku 192 Middle Horizon State Developments: Wari 196 7 Central Andean Political Developments 205 Early Ceremonial Centers of the Central and North-Central Andes 205 North-Central Peruvian Coast 209 The Late Intermediate Period 211 Late Horizon 212 The Inka and the Colonial Period 212 8 Conclusions 217 1. Heads as Symbols of Political Power 218 2. Heads and Regeneration 220 3. Heads, Violence, and Fertility 223 4. The Language of Heads 224 5. The Body Politic 226 6. Heads and Political Systems 227 7. Heads as Constructors of Social and Cultural Identity and Difference 229 8. Heads as Part of Economic Transactions 230 9. The Guarding and Maintenance of Heads 232 Appendixes 235 Sites and Toponyms Mentioned in the Text 235 Andean Cultural Sequences 239 Glossary 241 Notes 247 References 257 Index 281 About the Authors 293