ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY OF CAMELID CARAVANS
Arequipa, Peru
Transport in the Ancient Andes: An Ethnoarchaeological Study of Llama Caravan Travel Rates.
Director: Nicholas Tripcevich, Ph.D.
ABSTRACT
Long distance relationships across the mountainous terrain of the Andes are a distinctive attribute of Andean civilization. Ancient Andean states integrated their domains through road networks that served to connect the capital cities based in highland valleys, rather than through maritime trade as in much of the ancient world. Archaeologists recognize that a key element in the achievements of Andean peoples in their high altitude landscape was the domestication of camelids and the regional trade that ensued through llama caravans. The importance of llama caravans is widely reported in Spanish colonial documents yet few anthropological studies have closely investigated the caravanning tradition in the remaining regions where long-distance caravan travel persists.
This study will document the geography of contemporary llama caravan transport in southern Peru by traveling with a llama caravan and using a combination of geospatial technology and interviews to record subjective accounts by native caravan drovers. We will begin with a controlled physiological study of llama cargo-bearing capacity modeled on recent physiological studies of human porters in Nepal. Subsequently we will participate in the acquisition of salt from a quarry in Arequipa, Peru and the transport of this salt for trade to neighboring valleys in Apurimac during a three week journey.
We will carefully map the caravan route along footpaths using differential GPS and construct a travel speed model based on the physiological cargo llama profile acquired in our controlled study. This quantitative approach will build on new geographical models of travel in mountainous terrain where routes are mapped not simply through planar map coordinates, but also with a consideration of the effects of slope and other impediments to transport. These geographical models based on human hiking times have been used to estimate travel times between archaeological sites in a geographical information system (GIS) using digital terrain models, however no one has tailored these models to llama caravans in the Andes. Such travel models can be applied to specific distributional studies, such as long distance obsidian exchange, studies of ancient roads, and interaction by Andean polities. These models of distance based on travel time estimates involve many assumptions about ancient travel routes, yet arguably these estimates are closer to the past conceptions of distance than straight-line measures on a government map sheet.
The quantitative model-building will be complemented in our study through interviews with caravan drovers in Quechua and in Spanish as we travel with our informants, and in towns where elderly caravan drivers are found. Our team includes two Peruvian anthropologists, one who is a native Quechua speaker, and ethnographic record keeping will focus on landscape perception, socio-cultural context, economic exchanges, and decision making by caravan drovers. These accounts will further inform a generalized model of distance and geography calibrated to the observations and strategies of llama caravan drovers themselves.
This project is funded by a grant from the Howard Heinz Endowment for Archaeological Field Research in Latin America.
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