1st Edition
Amerindian Socio-Cosmologies between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica Toward an Anthropological Understanding of the Isthmo–Colombian Area
This book offers a new anthropological understanding of the socio-cosmological and ontological characteristics of the Isthmo–Colombian Area, beyond established theories for Amazonia, the Andes and Mesoamerica.
It focuses on a core region that has been largely neglected by comparative anthropology in recent decades. Centering on relations between Chibchan groups and their neighbors, the contributions consider prevailing socio-cosmological principles and their relationship to Amazonian animism and Mesoamerican and Andean analogism. Classical notions of area homogeneity are reconsidered and the book formulates an overarching proposal for how to make sense of the heterogeneity of the region’s indigenous groups. Drawing on original fieldwork and comparative analysis, the volume provides a valuable anthropological addition to archaeological and linguistic knowledge of the Isthmo・Colombian Area.
PART I The Isthmo–Colombian Area in context
1 Introduction: toward an anthropological understanding of the area between the Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Amazon
Ernst Halbmayer
PART II Conceptualizing the Isthmo–Colombian Area from a regional comparative perspective
2 An Amerindian humanism: order and transformation in Chibchan universes
Juan Camilo Nino Vargas
3 Languages of the Isthmo–Colombian Area and its southeastern borderland: Chibchan, Chocoan, Yukpa, and Wayuunaiki
Matthias Pache, Sergio Meira, and Colette Grinevald
4 Kinship, clanship, and hierarchy in the Isthmo–Colombian Area
Ernst Halbmayer
5 Between Mesoamerica, the Central Andes, and Amazonia: area conceptions, chronologies, and history
Christiane Clados and Ernst Halbmayer
6 The golden ones: the human body as reflective metallic surface in the Isthmo–Colombian Area
Christiane Clados
PART III Case studies: change and continuity in shamanic and priestly practices and the conception of things, humans, plants, and animals
7 Parents who own lives: relations and persons among the I’ku, a Chibchan group in Colombia
Jose Arenas Gomez
8 Tuwancha, "the One Who Knows": specialists and specialized knowledge in transhuman communication among the Sokorpa
Yukpa of the Serranía del Perijá, Colombia
Anne Goletz
9 The Wounaan haaihí je¨eu n¿m ritual with the k'ugwiu: reinforcing benevolence and preventing calamity
Chindio Pena Ismare, Julia Velasquez Runk, Rito Ismare Pena, and Chenier Carpio Opua
10 Things, life, and humans in Guna Yala (Panama): talking about molagana and nudsugana inside and outside Guna society
Monica Martinez Mauri
11 Plant ontologies among the Bribri of Talamanca, Costa Rica
Schabnam Kaviany
12 The place of livestock in human-non-human relationship among the Wayuu
Alessandro Mancuso
13 Murderous spirits: shamanic interpretation of armed violence, suicide, and exhumation in the economy of death of the Emberá (Chocó, Antioquia, Colombia)
Anne-Marie Losonczy
Biography
Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, University of Marburg, Germany.
