Rethinking the Andes–Amazonia Divide addresses an insistent question in South American Indigenous history: Was there an essential difference or continental divide between Indigenous Amazonians and Andeans? Few places on Earth stand in such stark physical contrast. The juxtaposition of deep forests and remote mountaintops is deeply entrenched in the Western imagination: on one side, the pinnacle of Native American statecraft and geopolitical power—civilization—by the sixteenth century, and on the other side, the model tribe as described in twentieth-century ethnography: naked and acephalous, at best barbarians. This book revisits the trope of Andean superiority and Amazonian austerity through cross-disciplinary studies from archaeology, linguistics, ethnohistory, and genetics, among other fields, reinvigorating the enduring question of divides in an energetic dialogue that highlights many twenty-first-century advances.
Part I provides succinct overviews of archaeology by Beresford-Jones and Murillo, linguistics by Haggerty, and genetics by Fehren-Schmitz. All see some meaning not only in the divide but also in the unsuspected variation through time, highlighting that what you see from one point of view may evaporate from another. Sampling bias favoring the Andes is still widely noted, but there are many cases of complexity and dynamic change revealed from the meteoric rise of twenty-first-century Amazonian archaeology. Inspired by these cases, Hornborg emphasizes the lively traffic across the divide within vast prestige goods systems, revealed in key highland sites (San Agustín, Chavín, and Tiwanaku) and the remarkable geoglyphs exposed by recent deforestation in the southwestern lowlands of Amazonia. Holistic anthropology reveals that “the distinction between Amazonian animism and Andean analogism should not be seen as a timeless or intrinsic one” (p. 62). Zuidema's radical comparison of the ceque system in Cuzco, the capital of Native America's largest empire in the sixteenth century, with a northern Gê village in the mid-1900s reveals similarities that suggest they are permutations of a deeper shared history.
In Part II, the long view of “deep time,” Dillehay gives an overview of initial occupations and earliest benchmarks, innovations, and convergences, including domestication and farming, between 15,000 and 5,000 years ago; he also presents genetic and craniometric evidence. The Mid-Holocene stands out as a period of diversification as people settled into evolving socioecological systems in mountaintops to dense tropical forests, and everything in between. Variation in cranial morphology is also described by Strauss and shows distinctive east to southwest groups, but Amazonia remains poorly known. Heggarty contrasts phylogenetic language families and the linguistic areas where languages of different origins converge, noting that early phylogenic reconstructions are based more on faith than fact. Kaulicke describes remarkable early social complexity and extensive traffic along the Marañón corridor against the backdrop of distinctive ecologies. Herrera Wassilowsky describes the highland Inka and lowland Chuncho in the Marañón contact area, emphasizing dynamic and even violent struggle in these contested frontiers.
Broad overall patterns and alternative models are discussed in Part III. Wilkinson expands on the archaeology of the Upper Amazon. In the Marañón, the frontier is not only a divide but also a dynamic world unto itself, neither Amazonian nor Andean. Genetic diversity discussed by Santos and genetic exchanges by Barbieri—notably high diversity and gene flow in the Andes, which are both low in Amazonia—also support a divide. However, a third lineage—the Chaco and southern Andes—reminds us that other frontiers need to be recognized. Linguistic chapters by Heggarty and by Gijn and Muysken discuss language families, which extend over large areas and timespans, as well as hybrid linguistic areas and language convergence, dynamics that straddle frontier areas. Neves suggests a new paradigm to address Amazonian variation over the past five millennia or so that recognizes diverse coevolutionary pathways. Notably, semi-intensive lowland economies of hyperdiversity and abundance—focusing on roots, fruits, and industrial plants, notably arboriculture—were very different from the terracing and irrigation systems of permanent open field or monocrop agriculture common in the Andes. Dillehay, McCray, and Netherly suggest that the Pacific coastal desert is another region, like the Chibchan world to the north or Chaco to the south, along the enduring divide that extends the length of the continent; one might add the southern tropical forest borderlands and Amazon River floodplains.
The southern Amazon frontier is the focus of Part IV. Both linguistics chapters by Adelaar and Zariquiey, addressing the southern Andean heartland of Tiwanaku and Cuzco, note the tremendous multilingual hybridity and influence from both sides, such as the putative influx of Amazonian (Arawakan) and later Andean languages around Titicaca. On the Amazonian side, in the Llanos de Mojos at the eastern edge of the imperial heartland, archaeology reveals an unexpectedly complex history for the lowlands. Lombardo and Capriles describe shell midden and forest island sites from the Early to Middle Holocene. Prümers describes networked systems, comprising the towns of the eastern Baures region and Casarabe in the Upper Mamoré, that show low-density urbanism quite distinct from the high-density cities of the Andes. During this later period, particularly after AD 900–1000, the frontier was affected by the rise and fall of Andean empires, as well as climate change during the Medieval Warm Period.
Andean ethnohistory is the focus of Part V. Tyuleneva addresses the “stamp of Andean prejudices in three chroniclers,” which colored both Indigenous and European views of the Amazonian backwaters. Bertazoni highlights the “othering of Antisuyu” in Indigenous views of Guamán Poma de Ayala. Both authors emphasize harsh physical conditions and bellicose and simple human societies—as epitomized by the naked, tattooed, and feather-garbed worshippers of snakes and jaguars—despite the potential for natural riches. Prejudices about the eastern frontier created a very real divide in early historical times, as Pearce notes, but again traffic across this divide was widespread. The influence of missionaries in the forested lowlands was critical, including during multiethnic revolts in the volatile decade of the 1740–1750s. Organized resistance among small groups along the frontier was a common feature of frontier groups in earlier colonial times and prior to that period; for example, Tupi-Guarani and multiethnic confederations in the south or the revolt led by Jivaroan-speakers, which sacked Spanish strongholds in the north. Although hybridity and variation appear everywhere, one notable commonality is that Amazonians still seem left out of history, still looking down on the Amazon. What might Amazonian ethnohistory tell us?
The conclusion by editors Pearce, Beresford-Jones, and Heggarty succinctly captures the book's content. It forcefully illustrates why archaeologists should pay careful attention to linguists, and vice versa, and why human biologists and geneticists need to heed both. The Fifth Encuentro Internacional de Arqueología Amazónica, held in Lima in November 2022, reminds us that the divide is a meeting place, a journey rather than a destination. We might also ask not what the divide is but what it does, why it is important, and to whom. As much of the region carooms toward a tipping point, and climate change, deforestation, roads, and cities threaten to erase the socioecological heritage, what does the past tell us about sustainable livelihoods or hybrid knowledge for the making of better futures that include Indigenous voices? Amazonia is poised to lead the way for such an inclusive archaeology of the future. This book stands as the benchmark in the academic dialogue: it is required reading for regional archaeologists or others interested in Indigenous peoples in Latin America and for any scholars who aim to understand continental and millennial-scale coevolution of human–environmental systems.
