Workshops
The Institute of Andean Research, IAR sponsored the workshop entitled Humanos y Camélidos: Interacciones Sociales e Historia Evolutiva in Arica, Chile, July 6-8, 2023. With financial support from the IAR, the workshop brought together archaeologists from Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina.
The goal of the workshop was to compare, discuss, and critically evaluate new and interesting insights into the complex history of interactions between humans and camelids in South America.
The workshop aimed to provide an opportunity for researchers from the Andean countries to discuss the social relationships between camelids and humans and the evolutionary history of camelids in light of the recent surge in ancient genetic research. We explored topics in archaeology,
Although the north coast of Chile was not a focal point of camelid domestication or rearing, Arica was an ideal venue for the workshop due to the ease of travel accessibility and the local assistance of Chilean archaeologists, Daniela Valenzuela and Calogero Santoro of the University of Tarapaca.
In addition to Valenzuela and Santoro, the participants included David Trigo and Jose Capriles (Bolivia), Axel Nielsen and Hugo Yaccobaccio (Argentina), and Victor Vazquez and Teresa Rosales Tham (Peru).
The topical and geographic scope of the workshop presentations was broad. In selecting participants, the IAR attempted to bring researchers exploring unique subjects and we granted the participants the leeway to address topics of their choice. Therefore, the subject matter was eclectic rather than focused on a single theme. The presentations integrated multiple types of archaeological, ethnographic, experimental, and visual data. Among the topics that participants explored was domestic camelid breed size variability and morphotypes, changes in herd composition following Spanish colonization, ritual landscapes and the political mobilization of herders, the many uses of camelid material culture in the economies of non-pastoralists, the dynamic ritual function of camelids as non-human persons revealed in iconography, the transformation of camelid bones into bone tools. The eight data-rich articles published in Chungara Revista de Antropología Chilena demonstrate the creative and innovative research that Andean scholars are undertaking related to humans and camelids. These studies will inspire others to address new avenues of research.
Cajamarca, Peru (Aug. 28-30, 2000)
The theme of this first workshop was how to combine archaeological and ethnohistoric data and perspectives. Subsidiary themes were: Myths and cosmology, ethnicity and identity, and the frontiers of the empire. LA ARQUEOLOGIA Y LA ETNOHISTORIA: UN ENCUENTRO ANDINO was the first volume to result from the IARs series of workshops.
The volume includes papers by Segundo Moreno from Ecuador, Lorenzo Huertas from Peru, Sonia Alconini from Bolivia, Jorge Hidalgo and Calogero Santoro from Chile and Ana Maria Lorand and Veronica Williams from Argentina; Maria Rostworowski provided a summary commentary. Discussions following each paper were also transcribed and included in the publication.
Purmanmarca, Argentina (2004)
The Interrelationships of New World Cultures Program, Costa Rica (1958)
“A conference of several days duration at which type samples and tentative conclusions are to be presented and discussed with a view to a series of comprehensive and integrated publications” (Mason 1967).
Viking Fund Conference, New York (1947)
“In July of 1947 the Viking Fund underwrote the cost of a two-day conference held at its headquarters in New York under the joint auspices of the Fund and the Institute of Andean Research. Many important papers on Peruvian archaeology by participants in the program were given at the conference. With the aid of a grant from the Viking Fund these were published as a joint publication of the Institute and the Society for American Archaeology: Bennett, Wendell C., Editor. 1948. A Reappraisal of Peruvian Archaeology, Memoirs of the Society for American Archaeology, No. 4, Menasha” (Mason 1967).