We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
COVERING THE EARTH. Mapping the Walkabout in Andean Pueblos de Indios.
- Authors
Beyersdorff, Margot
- Abstract
I discuss how the chorographic view of landscape in Spanish cartography was at variance with the perspective of terrain represented in Andean mapping media when both traditions converged upon the implementation of the Crown-mandated surveys known as the "Relaciones Geográficas del Peru" (1577-1586). These surveys were collected and transcribed by modern editors for publication. The sole map included in the Relaciones may have been due to the self-interest of the Spanish author. The continued use of Andean media and the art of "memory mapping," both of precontact origin, may explain why indigenous mappings did not enter the Relaciones record. This memory activity was, and is still, manifested during the ritualized traversing of community-held land boundaries. Therefore, the few extant paper-like mappings had been appended to land-litigation documents. I examine how the visualized route and the naming of topographical features underlie three sixteenth-century mappings and their accompanying judicial accounts (relaciones). These mappings and accounts display the native Andeans' adaptation of precontact place identification practices to Spanish boundary-marking methods. The mappings demonstrate a hybrid cartographic art, which combines manuscript and block print within the pictorial format. In one of the maps the artist-scribes include a relación in Quechua (and its Spanish version), a rare example of this genre in Andean letters. Indigenous cabildo authorities, exemplified by Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, adopted writing practices by recording place names. This activity led to a pan-Andean lexicon of toponymns for judicial purposes. Contemporary ethnographic research on current walkabout customs could further elucidate the genesis of these Colonial Andean mappings and lead to the recovery of other specimens.
- Subjects
AMERICA; CARTOGRAPHY; INDIGENOUS cartography; HISTORICAL maps; MAP drawing; SIXTEENTH century; GUAMAN Poma de Ayala, Felipe, fl. 1613; HISTORY of the Andes
- Publication
Latin American Research Review, 2007, Vol 42, Issue 3, p129
- ISSN
0023-8791
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1353/lar.2007.0047