LACS Lecture. Building Indios: A Genealogy of Landscape and Political Subjectivity in Peru's Zaña Valley, 12th-18th Centuries C.E.

In this paper, I explore the legacies of the Spanish forced resettlement of indigenous peoples in colonial Peru (reducción). Drawing on archaeological research at the site of Carrizales in Peru's Zaña valley, I begin by examining the immediate impacts of resettlement on indigenous lifeways. I demonstrate that native peoples rapidly and drastically transformed their food-collection and preparation strategies in the wake of resettlement, sedimenting new relationships with the landscape and with imperial institutions. I then draw on regional archaeological survey and archival research to examine the long-term consequences of reducción in the 17th and 18th centuries, focusing in particular on the unanticipated consequences of environmental and social change. Based on these results, I ultimately suggest that a genealogical approach to landscape – one that traces the winding path of engagement between peoples, environments and political institutions – offers a much richer account of imperial politics than one that focuses only on brief, violent flashes of political encounters."

Parker VanValkenburgh is assistant professor of anthropology at Brown University. He is an archaeologist whose research focuses on landscapes, politics and environmental change in the Early Modern World – particularly, in late prehispanic and early colonial Peru. He received his Ph.D. in 2012 from Harvard University and previously held positions at the University of Vermont and Washington University in St. Louis. Since 2008, he has directed a research project investigating the impacts of Spanish colonial forced resettlement (reducción) on landscapes.