Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-m8qmq Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-25T04:35:42.065Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Andean luxury foods: special food for the ancestors, deities and the élite

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Christine A. Hastorf*
Affiliation:
University of California-Berkeley, USA.

Abstract

Certain kinds of food can be classed as “luxurious” because they are difficult to procure and reserved for an élite – but luxury foods can be more surely defined from their context of use. Using examples from Andean archaeology the author shows how different foodstuffs perform ceremonial roles in different sectors of society. Many ordinary people use them to feed the ancestors, while the élite may put significance on a variety of consumables, including human blood.

Type
Research
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2003

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Abercrombie, T. A. 1998. Pathways of Memory and Power, Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
Alva, W. & Donnan, C. B. 1993. Royal tombs of Sipdn. Los Angeles, Calif.: Fowler Museum of Cultural History, University of California.Google Scholar
Appadurai, Arjun. 1981. Gastro-Politics in Huindu South Asia. American Ethnologist 8:494511.Google Scholar
Arnold, D. 1992. The house of earth-bricks and Inca stones: gender, memory and cosmos in Qaqachaka. Journal of Latin American Lore 17(1):369.Google Scholar
Arsenault, D. 1991. Pratiques alimentaires rituelles dans la société Mochica: Le contexte du festin or Food, politics and rituals in Moche society. In symposium Political meals in the Andes, organised by Gero, J. and Hastorf, C. A., paper and abstract, 56th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, New Orleans.Google Scholar
Bastien, J. 1978. Mountain of the Condor: metaphor and ritual in an Andean Ayllu. St. Paul: West Publishing Co.Google Scholar
Bell, C. 1992. Ritual theory, Ritual practice. Oxford: oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bourget, S. & Newman, M. E. 1998. A toast to the ancestors: ritual warfare and sacrificial blood in Moche culture. Baessler-Archiv (Neue Folge). 46(1): 85106.Google Scholar
Cobo, B. 1964 [1653]. Historia del Nuevo Mundo. Biblioteca de Autores Expañoles. Tomo 9192. Madrid: Ediciones Atlas.Google Scholar
Conklin, B. 1993. Hunting the ancestors: death and alliance in Wari cannibalism. Latin American Anthropology Review 5(2):6570.Google Scholar
Conklin, B. 1995. “thus our bodies, thus was our custom”: mortuary cannibalism in an Amazonian society. American Ethnologist 22(1): 75101.Google Scholar
Cook, A. 1994. Wariy Tiwanaku: Entre el Estilo y la Imagen. Lima: Pontifica Universidad Católica del Peru.Google Scholar
D’Altroy, T.N., 1991. Empire growth and consolidation: the Xauxa region of Peru under the incas. Ph. D. dissertation, Department of Anthropology, University of California-Los Angeles.Google Scholar
D’Altroy, T. N., Lorandi, A. & Williams, . 1998. Ceramic production and use in the inca political economy. MASCA Research Papers in Science and Archaeology 15 (Supplement): 284312.Google Scholar
Dean, E. & Kojan, D. 1999. Santiago, In Early Settlement in Chiripa, Bolivia: Research of the Taraco Archaeological Project, No. 57 Contributions Archaeological Research Facility Monograph Publications. Hastorf, C. A., ed. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley: 3742.Google Scholar
Dietler, M. & Hayden, B. (eds.). 2001. Feasts: archaeological and ethnographic perspectives on food, politics, and power. Washington, DC: Smithsonian institution Press.Google Scholar
Donnan, C. B. 1975. The Thematic approach to Moche iconography. Journal of Latin American Lore 1:147162.Google Scholar
Donnan, C. B. 1976. Moche Art and Iconography. Los Angeles: UCLA Latin American Centre.Google Scholar
Donnan, C. B. (ed.) 1985. Early Ceremonial Architecture in the Andes. Washington D. C.: Dumbarton oaks.Google Scholar
Douglas, M. 1966. Purity and Danger. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.Google Scholar
Doyle, M. 1988. The ancestor cult and burial ritual in seventeenth and eighteenth century central Peru. PhD dissertation, UCLA, University Microfilms international.Google Scholar
Farrington, I. S. & Urry, J. 1985. Food and the early history of cultivation, Journal of Ethnobiology 5(2):143157.Google Scholar
Farb, P. & Armelagous, G.. 1980. Consuming Passions, Boston: Houghton Mifflin.Google Scholar
Fernández JuáREZ, G. 1995. El Banquete Aymara: Mesas y Yatiris. La Paz: HISBOL.Google Scholar
Goody, J. 1982. Cooking, Cuisine and Class, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Guaman, POMA DE AYALA, Felipe, . 1980. El Primer Nueva Coró-nica y Buen Gobierno. Murra, J. and Adorno, R eds. Mexico: Siglo Veintiuno.Google Scholar
Gumerman, G. IV. 1994. Corn for the Dead: The significance of Zea mays in Moche burial offerings, in Corn and Culture in the Prehistoric New World, Johannessen, S. and Hastorf, C.A. , eds. Boulder, Co: Westview Press:399410.Google Scholar
Hastorf, C.A. & Johannessen, S. 1993. Pre-Hispanic political change and the role of maize in the central Andes of Peru. American Anthropologist 95(1):115138.Google Scholar
Hastorf, C. A. 1999. Early Settlement in Chiripa, Bolivia: Research of the Taraco Archaeological Project, No. 57 Contributions Archaeological Research Facility Monograph Publications, University of California, Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley.Google Scholar
Helms, M.W. 1979. Ancient Panama: chiefs in search of power, Austin: University of Texas Press.Google Scholar
Hugh-JONES, S. n.d. The gender of some Amazonian gifts: an experiment with an experiment. Amazonia and Melanesia: Gender and Anthropological comparison. Wenner-Gren. Ms in authors possession.Google Scholar
Isbell, W. & Mcewan, G. (eds). 1991. Huari Administrative Structure: Prehistoric Monumental Architecture and State Government, Washington DC: Dumbarton Oaks.Google Scholar
Johnsson, M. 1986. Food and culture among Bolivian Aymara. Stockholm: Almquist and Wiskell international.Google Scholar
Kuznar, L. A. 2001. An introduction to Andean religious ethnoarchaeology: Preliminary results and future directions. Ethnoarchaeology of Andean South America Kuznar, L. (ed.) Ann Arbor: International Monographs in Prehistory: 3866.Google Scholar
Levi-STRAUSS, C. 1966. The culinary triangle, Partisan Review 33:586595.Google Scholar
Miller, D. 1985. Artefacts as categories: a study of ceramic variability in central India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, J. 1996. Architecture and power in the ancient Andes, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, K. M., Steadman, D. & Defrance, S. 1999. Herds, fish and fowl in the domestic and ritual economy of Formative Chiripa. in Early Settlement in Chiripa, Bolivia: Research of the Taraco Archaeological Project, No. 57 Contributions Archaeological Research Facility Monograph Publications, Hastorf, C.A., ed. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley: 105116.Google Scholar
Moseley, M. 1975. Maritime Foundations of Civilization. Menlo Park, CA: Cummings Press.Google Scholar
Moseley, M. & Day.Z, K. 1982. ChanChan: the desert City. Santa Fe: School of American Research.Google Scholar
Murra, J.V. 1960. Rite and crop in the Inca State. In Culture and History, Diamond, S. ed. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 393407.Google Scholar
Murúa, M.de. 1962 [1590]. Historia General del Peru, Origen y Descendencia de los IncaMadrid: Biblioteca Americana Vetus.Google Scholar
Quilter, J. 1990. Moche revolt of the objects. Latin American Antiquity 1(1):4265.Google Scholar
Richards, A. 1951 (1939). Land, labour and diet in northern Rhodesia: an economic study of the Bemba tribe, oxford: oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Rowe, A.P. 1984. Costumes & featherwork of the Lords of Chimor: textiles from Peru’s North coast. Washington, D.C.: Textile Museum.Google Scholar
Salomon, F. 1987. Ancestor cults and resistance to the state in Arequipa, ca. 1748–1754. In Resistance, rebellion, and consciousness in the Andean Peasant World, 18th to 20th centuries, Stern, S.J. ed. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press:148165.Google Scholar
Sanday, P. 1986. Divine Hunger, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Steadman, L. 1999. The Ceramics, In Early Settlement in Chiripa, Bolivia: Research of the Taraco Archaeological Project, No. 57 Contributions Archaeological Research Facility Monograph Publications, Hastorf, Christine A. ed. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley, pp. 6172.Google Scholar
Whitehead, W.T. 1999. Paleoethnobotanical evidence. In Early Settlement in Chiripa, Bolivia: Research of the Taraco Archaeological Project, No. 57 Contributions Archaeological Research Facility Monograph Publications, Hastorf, Christine A. ed. Berkeley: University of California, Berkeley. pp. 95104.Google Scholar