UC Santa Cruz

My dissertation traces the life of forest materials from Amazonia into the Andes and beyond to illuminate how the Inkas of the Andean highlands (Western South America) imagined Amazonia and its inhabitants before and after Spanish colonization (c. 1400–1825 C.E.) and, conversely, how Amazonian peoples understood the Inkas and other “invaders,” including colonizing Spaniards and modern tourists. Interaction between the highlands and Amazonian lowlands has been little studied in general, with most interest focused on the realm of political relations and trade. Although the field of visual studies has largely ignored this subject, there is ample visual evidence that Amazonia played a significant role in the Inkas’ imaginary as a place of both subversion and refuge. Likewise, while there is limited Amazonian artifactual and ethnohistorical documentation from the periods in which the Inkas and later Spaniards attempted to control forest peoples, there is sufficient material to suggest a general Amazonian approach to unknown and possibly hostile others. Briefly, as will be discussed in the second half of this dissertation, the Amazonian strategy was to integrate unknown peoples into their relational cosmology. Ideally, and whenever possible, the integration was accomplished through “friend-making,” a process that intended to forestall hostility and foster mutually beneficial relationships.

My study of cross-cultural exchanges between the Inkas and neighboring Amazonian peoples engages with the multi-sensorial aspects of forest materials in the form of wooden drinking vessels (keros), exquisite boxes to hold herbs and sweets (coqueras), and Amazonian textile designs (kené) by living artists to help us understand the ways the Inkas and Amazonian cultures adapted to one another, creating and reinforcing each other’s alterity across time.