Comparative Arawakan Histories : Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia

by Hill, Jonathan David; Santos-Granero, Fernando

• ISBN13: 9780252027581
• ISBN10: 0252027582
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2002-09-01
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

This penetrating study is the first to synthesize the writings of ethnologists, historians, and anthropologists concerned with contemporary Arawakan cultures in South America and the adjacent Caribbean basin. Before they were largely decimated and dispersed by the effects of European colonization, Arawak-speaking peoples were the most widespread language family in Latin America and the Caribbean, and they were the first people Columbus encountered in the Americas. Comparative Arawakan Histories examines social structures, political hierarchies, rituals, religious movements, gender relations, and linguistic variations through historical perspectives to document sociocultural diversity across the diffused Arawakan diaspora.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(24)
Jonathan D. Hill
Fernando Santos-Granero
PART I: LANGUAGES, CULTURES, AND LOCAL HISTORIES
The Arawakan Matrix: Ethos, Language, and History in Native South America	25	(26)
Fernando Santos-Granero
Arawak Linguistic and Cultural Identity through Time: Contact, Colonialism, and Creolization	51	(23)
Neil L. Whitehead
Historical Linguistics and Its Contribution to Improving the Knowledge of Arawak	74	(25)
Sidney Da Silva Facundes
PART 2: HIERARCHY, DIASPORA, AND NEW IDENTITIES
Rethinking the Arawakan Diaspora: Hierarchy, Regionality, and the Amazonian Formative	99	(24)
Michael J. Heckenberger
Social Forms and Regressive History: From the Campa Cluster to the Mojos and from the Mojos to the Landscaping Terrace-Builders of the Bolivian Savanna	123	(24)
France-Marie Renard-Casevitz
Piro, Apurina, and Campa: Social Dissimilation and Assimslation as Historical Processes in Southwestern Amazonia	147	(24)
Peter Gow
Both Omphalos and Margin: On How the Pa'ikwene (Palikur) See Themselves to Be at the Center and on the Edge at the Same Time	171	(28)
Alan Passes
PART 3: POWER, CULTISM, AND SACRED LANDSCAPES
A New Model of the Northern Arawakan Expansion	199	(24)
Alberta Zucchi
Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Woman: Fertility Cultism and Historical Dynamics in the Upper Rio Negro Region	223	(25)
Jonathan D. Hill
Secret Religious Cults and Political Leadership: Multiethnic Confederacies from Northwestern Amazonia	248	(21)
Silvia M. Vidal
Prophetic Traditions among the Baniwa and Other Arawakan Peoples of the Northwest Amazon	269	(26)
Rosin M. Wright
References Cited	295	(32)
Contributors	327	(4)
Index	331