Book Description
This volume provides a multi-sited and multivocalic investigation of the dynamic social, political and economic processes in the creation and implementation of an agricultural development project. The raised field rehabilitation project attempted to introduce a pre-Columbian agricultural method into the contemporary Lake Titicaca Basin. ... Read more

Amazon.com
A millennium before the Incas built their empire, the city of Tiahuanaco sat at the center of a great empire of its own. Located on Lake Titicaca, the world's highest at 13,000 feet, in what is now Bolivia, at the very limits of agriculture, the people of Tiahuanaco developed an ingenious system of cultivation based on raised planting beds alternating with trenches that served as irrigation ditches. From A.D. 400 to 800, the temples of Tiahuanaco glittered with gold and the empire supported as many as 250,000 people. Kolata, who has spent more than 17 years excavating the empire's ruins, weaves together the story of Tiahuanaco and the region's modern inhabitants, the Aymara.Book Description
In a secluded valley high in the Andes Mountains, long before the time of the Incas and the Aztecs, the empire of the Aymara rose from the shores of Lake Titicaca and flourished for nearly a thousand years. The secrets of the Aymara civilization, one of the first great empires of the Americas, have only recently been deciphered from the haunting ruins of their splendid temples, among which their contemporary descendants still live and work today.

In Valley of the Spirits, Alan Kolata takes us deep into the mystical world of the Aymara, where past and present come together and the spirits of ancient ancestors still speak to shamans in the voices of mountain springs. Kolata's unique knowledge of the Aymara is based on 17 years of research at the site of the ancient empire.

Its crown jewel was the dazzling ancient capital of Tiahuanaco, whose gold and silver-appointed temples and "monumental stone sculptures intensified the mythic aura of the city, imbuing it with a quality of the supernatural." From A.D. 400-1100, it was the spiritual center of the Andean world. According to Aymara myth, the creator god Viracocha brought man to life from the springs and rocks of Tiahuanaco's sacred landscape.

The city's rich symbolism linked man inextricably to the majestic plan—and the cyclical fates—of nature. Royal priests performed elaborate animal and human sacrifices and buried human trophy heads and the mummified remains of Aymara kings in lavish religious pageants. So impressive was the legacy of Tiahuanaco that the Inca rulers claimed descent from the Aymara kings more than 500 years after the empire's mysterious catastrophic demise.

Kolata deciphers the mysteries of the ancient monuments, from the massive Akapana pyramid, the symbol of sacred mountains, and of fertility and abundance, to the imposing archway known as the Gateway of the Sun, among the most exquisite artistic monuments of the ancient Americas. And he takes us into the contemporary world of the Aymara as well, where shamans recite the names of ancestral spirits in a hypnotic protocol of remembrance and homage to Lady Earth and Lord Sky.

"To anyone fascinated by the total experience of humans, to anyone who wishes to go beyond the familiar world, to anyone wanting to push the envelope of their own perceptions, a sojourn into the mind and history of the Aymara is disturbing, exhilarating, and ultimately unforgettable."—Alan Kolata, in his Introduction to Valley of the Spirits ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Archaeological Speculation Presented as Fact
This book states what I take to be the archaeological myth that Tiahuanaco flourished between 400 and 1100AD. The author doesn't state any conclusive evidence to support this hypothesis. The other myth that the peoples of the Americas entered the country via the Bering Strait is also stated, without mention of any supporting evidence. Frankly, I found chapter 8 of Harold Wilkins' Mysteries of Ancient South America far more informative than the entirety of this book. Apparently, Tiahuanaco in Quechuan translates as "city of darkness or waning light", which wouldn't apply to a city high up in the mountains! Therefore, it seems that Wilkins' reasoning that Tiahuanaco was at one time a submerged city that was raised when the Andes were formed has more scientific veracity.

Most of the book is theories unsupported by evidence. The only chapter I liked was the "Restoration" chapter where the author convinces some locals to return to the ancient method of agriculture using raised fields (ridge backs), and witnesses spectacular results. Given the ever increasing costs and ever diminishing returns of industrial agriculture it seems sensible to investigate ancient but effective techniques of food production.

Overall I would recommend Mysteries of Ancient South America and Secret Cities of Old South America over this.

Archeology rocks!
I think this is my favorite book I've read about South America before and after a trip there.The author introduces us to the people who live there and are his friends.We get to see how Tiawanaku looked when it was in use and learn about customs and traditions which live today.The project to re-introduce ancient agricultural practices of raised beds and irrigation,was exciting.We were kept on the edge of our seat waiting to see if a freeze killed the crop and put the population in jeopardy.A real armchair trip to Bolivia!

Spirit of the Aymara
If you can't go to Bolivia, this is the next best thing.The archeological information about Tiawanaku is fascinating.The cultural information regarding the Aymara is great too.But, my favorite part was the project to reintroduce abandoned agricultural practices to the area.Much larger populations were supported in ancient times due to the micromanagement of climate using irrigation and raised fields.And it was dramatically demonstrated that it works in this book!Good reading!

Valley of the Spirits
I really enjoyed this book and have since read further volumes on South American Indian cultures because of it.Written by the primary researcher at Tiahuanaco, Alan Kolata, the text covers the origin of the earliestpre-Inca highland civilization, the Ayamara.So impressive was the legacyof this people to their successors that the Inca themselves sought tolegitimize their claim to empire by seeking to place their roots at thissite.I found Kolata's successful test of his economic hypothesisregarding population density and farming methods (by the reintroduction ofraised bed and canal farming at altitude) especially profound.Itcertainly made abundantly apparent the pertinance of modern dayarchaeology, not only to the preservation of the world's ancientinheritance but to the material well being of modern populations as well. This book is a good place to start for anyone with an interest in ancientSouth American cultures and to applied archaeology.

this is a fine book
I'm an Egyptologist, but I like to read outside my own field.This excellent summary of years of work in the field was a real joy.It was exciting to read of a culture "done in" by a change in climate (we think this also happened in ancient Egypt!), and heartwarming to read of ancient irrigation technology revived to help people today.I feel this book is a must for anyone who cares about the past . . . and people today ... Read more

Book Description

Originally published in 1952.

Book Description
Pathways of Memory and Power crosses the disciplinary boundary where anthropology and history meet, exploring the cultural frontier of the colonial and postcolonial Andes. Thomas A. Abercrombie uses his fieldwork in the Aymara community of Santa Barbara de Culta, Bolivia, as a starting point for his ambitious examination of the relations between European forms of historical consciousness and indigenous Andean ways of understanding the past. Writing in an inviting first-person narrative style, Abercrombie confronts the ethics of fieldwork by comparing ethnographic experience to the power-laden contexts that produce historical sources.
Making clear the early and deep intermingling of practices and world views among Spaniards and Andeans, Christians and non-Christians, Abercrombie critiques both the romanticist tendency to regard Andean culture as still separate from and resistant to European influences, and the melodramatic view that all indigenous practices have been obliterated by colonial and national elites. He challenges prejudices that, from colonial days to the present, have seen Andean historical knowledge only in mythic narratives or narratives of personal experience. Bringing an ethnographer’s approach to historiography, he shows how complex Andean rituals that hybridize European and indigenous traditions—such as libation dedications and llama sacrifices held on saints’ day festivals—are in fact potent evidence of social memory in the community. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Excellent read on indigenous world-views
Two important elements of social "habit memory" processes strike me in Pathways of Memory and Power.The first is the apparent ease with which the colonial power asserted its program for "social amnesia" through a physical restructuring of social space (rectilinear, functional living spatial constructions) and time (the marking of Church calendrical and daily time, basically obliterating indigenous conceptions of time).The second is the reinterpretation of public and private to suit a colonial "moral code" based on the ritual performances of excessive drinking and bloodletting.These systematic, institutionalized policies effectively dismantled the indians' social habit-memories-replacing them with new ones modeled on Castilian life.

The long-standing issue of religious syncretism is (thankfully) questioned, through an understanding of how the indigenous people create distinctions between the "more Christian" and "more Andean" aspects of their deities and religions.The quipu system of knotting preserves a physical remembering which was transformed, but not destroyed, by Christianity. As Abercrombie states, "the techniques may have remained the same, but the content, the memories, were changing" (p. 260).The "imagenes de bulto," which were introduced by colonial priests, replaced the indigenous idols with Catholic saints, and initiated a long process of revisionist iconography for the indians from one source to another.The llama, as an animal that closely (to the indians) resembled humans in their social interactions, acted as a replacement for the human sacrificial victim; this helped ease the sacrificial rituals into a more acceptable Christian realm of possibilities.The origin myth, with its "multiple, not unique" origins was contentious; although re-reading and appropriating the Christ-like image of Tunupa, and the "great flood" and "tower of Babel" stories, led to a deeper understanding by colonial powers in the religion of their subjugated workers.

The historical grounding in colonial documents led to a deeper, richer, fuller picture of present-day ethnography.I think this method serves to illuminate so many elements in everyday life that seem otherwise "meaningless" or where pre-literate peoples have not developed a "linear" sense of history, as their colonizers encouraged.The ability to recreate, from historical documents, a more complete view of indigenous concepts about space, time, self, and history, is invaluable.It strikes me as a process of reading "through" (not between) the lines of the colonial texts-into the minds of the colonizers-in a way that is instructive in both the development of colonial systems for creation of dominant ideologies, and how the indigenous people actual recreated their colonizers through an adaptation of their habit-memories into a new (world) context. ... Read more