[Aztlan] British Museum Andean Conference

[michael ruggeri]

Dear All,
     Paul Heggarty and David Beresford-Jones send the following
invitation to a series of lectures on the prehistory of the Andes at
the British Museum on Tuesday 16th September.  There is also an
opportunity for anyone working on the Archaeology or Linguistics of
the Andes to meet with Professors Kaulicke, Cerron-Palomino or Adelaar
on Friday 19th September, see to the bottom of the message below.
     The next South American Archaeology Seminar at the Institute of
Archaeology will be on Saturday 29th November, please let me know if
you are interested in giving a paper.
     Best,
     Bill
Dear All,

Everyone is welcome to a series of lectures by leading scholars with
time for audience questions.

The Prehistory of the Andes:  Archaeology and Linguistics.
BP Lecture Theatre, Clore Education Centre, British Museum, Great
Russell St., London

Tuesday 16th September 2008  --  All Welcome

www.arch.cam.ac.uk/ala/bmac.html

Time

Speaker(s)

Theme

10:00

Dr Colin McEwan

Welcome.

10:15

Prof. Willem Adelaar

Linguistic Oddities of the Andes.

11:00

Prof. Peter Kaulicke

Origins of Social Complexity in Ancient Peru.

11:45

       coffee break

12:00

Prof. William Isbell

Imperial Ideology:  Re-evaluating Religious Iconography Shared by Wari
and Tiwanaku (A.D. 600-1000).

13:00

       lunch break

14:15

Dr David Beresford-Jones
& Dr Paul Heggarty

Towards a Coherent Prehistory for the Andean Peoples:  Bringing
Together the Archaeological and Linguistic Stories.

15:00

Prof. Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino

Unravelling the Enigma of the 'Secret Language of the Incas'.

15:45

       coffee break

16:00

Dr John Hemming

Inca Ruins in Vilcabamba:  Finds, Feuds, Frauds and Fantasies.

17:00

       wine reception    (by invitation)

Welcome.

Dr Colin McEwan

Head of the Americas Section and curator of the Latin American
Collections, British Museum

Linguistic Oddities of the Andes.

A tour of weird and wonderful language survivors from the pre-
Columbian Andes:   the 'Taki', ritual chant of Inkawasi and the last
gasps of the speech of the Moche empire;  Puquina, the language of
Tiahuanaco fossilised only in the jargon of the itinerant medicine-men
of Callahuaya;  Uro, the language of the 'semi-human' water-men of the
floating islands of Titicaca;  and Jaqaru and Kawki, the last
beleaguered redoubts of 'Central Aymara'...

Prof. Willem Adelaar

University of Leiden,
Netherlands

Eminent Andean linguist, lead author of Languages of the Andes.

Origins of Social Complexity in Ancient Peru.

'Oldest City in the Americas'?  'First State in the New World'?
Dotted along the desert coastal strip of north-central Peru, Caral and
a host of associated archaeological sites enjoy exceptional
preservation conditions.  Discoveries here have prompted radical
revisions and heated debate in archaeological circles far beyond the
Andes.  With their reliance on maritime resources as much as
agriculture, and their ' Pre-Ceramic' classification in the
archaeological chronology, Peru's 'Norte Chico' seems to challenge Old
World preconceptions as to the building-blocks required for complex
societies to arise...

Prof. Peter Kaulicke

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú ,
Lima

Eminent Andean archaeologist, editor of Boletín de Arqueología PUCP.

Imperial Ideology:  Re-evaluating Religious Iconography Shared by Wari
and Tiwanaku (A.D. 600-1000).

Tiwanaku, high on the bleak Bolivian Altiplano on the shores of Lake
Titicaca, has long fascinated travellers and archaeologists alike.
For decades the extraordinary motifs of its monumental stone carvings
were seen as the religious inspiration for the 'Middle Horizon':  the
ancient empire that rose and fell across the Andes centuries before
the Incas.  Prof. Isbell is world's foremost scholar of this period,
and director of excavations at Conchopata, close to the other great
Middle Horizon city of Huari, near Ayacucho in the southern Peruvian
highlands.  His recent discoveries of gigantic ceramics depicting
dramatic Tiwanaku motifs seem set to overturn much of what
archaeologists thought they knew about the origins of the Middle
Horizon and the interactions between its Peruvian and Bolivian
heartlands...

Prof. William Isbell

State University of New York at
Binghampton

Eminent Andean archaeologist, co-editor of the series Andean
Archaeology .

Towards a Coherent Prehistory for the Andean Peoples:  Bringing
Together the Archaeological and Linguistic Stories.

 From southernmost Colombia to north-west Argentina, the linguistic
landscape of the Andes is dominated by two language families.  Their
present-day distributions have long misled observers into assuming
that Quechua came from Cuzco with the Incas, and Aymara from
Tiahuanaco.  Linguistic evidence explodes these popular myths, but the
true origins of these languages remain disputed even among
specialists.  Much hinges on the crucial role of Wari;  we put forward
a radically new scenario to weave the archaeological and linguistic
stories at last into a holistic human prehistory for the Andes...

Dr David Beresford-Jones & Dr Paul Heggarty

McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of
Cambridge

- dbj:  Specialist in the archaeology of the Peruvian south coast and
the interface with linguistics.

- ph:    Historical linguist specialised in the interface with
archaeology, and in Andean languages.

   co-organisers of the Cambridge, London and Lima symposia programme

Unravelling the Enigma of the 'Secret Language of the Incas'.

Quechua, the lingua franca of Tawantinsuyu -- surely this was the
Incas' native tongue?  Yet the linguistic clues reveal otherwise:  the
enigmatic 'Cantar de Tupac Yupanqui' is not Quechua, nor even are such
names as Vilcanota, Ollantaytambo, even Cuzco itself.  The trail leads
instead to Aymara, first 'official language of the Incas', and perhaps
ultimately to the Puquina of Tiahuanaco -- beguiling clues to the
Incas' origin myths and their ultimate homeland...

Prof. Rodolfo
Cerrón-Palomino

Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú , Lima

Eminent Andean linguist, prolific author of standard reference works
in Andean linguistics (Quechua, Aymara, Mochica, Uro).

Inca Ruins in Vilcabamba:  Finds, Feuds, Frauds and Fantasies.

For two centuries, Choquequirau was thought to be the 'lost city' of
Manco Inca, until in 1911 Machu Picchu was discovered.  During the
past half-century a rich cast of explorers, scholars, adventurers and
charlatans has been locating other ruins in the densely wooded hills
of Vilcabamba...

Dr John Hemming

Director (retired), Royal Geographical Society

Renowned author of The Conquest of the Incas and Monuments of the
Incas, as well as a three-volume history of the indigenous peoples of
Brazil, and Tree of Rivers: The Story of the Amazon.

------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
--- ----------------------

You may know of the British Academy's UK-Latin America Link Programme,
whose aim is to foment closer personal and institutional links and co-
operation between the universities of the UK and those of Latin
America.  One of the projects funded under this programme this year is
on the history and prehistory of the peoples of the Central Andes
(Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador), especially as seen by linguists and
archaeologists.

Our UK events are to be held this September, and we shall be hosting
for a week in the UK some leading experts in this field.  We aim to
provide an opportunity for UK-based students and scholars who are
conducting (or intend to conduct) research either in the linguistics
or in the archaeology of the Andes to meet these visiting professors
and to discuss with them plans for fieldwork or other research in the
Andes, and possible institutional support there.  These visiting
professors are:

*   Prof. Peter Kaulicke, head of archaeology at the leading
university in Peru, the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú
(PUCP) in Lima.

*   Prof. Rodolfo Cerrón-Palomino, head of linguistics at the PUCP and
author of the standard reference works on the Quechua, Aymara, Mochica
and Uru-Chipaya families.

*   Prof. Willem Adelaar of the University of Leiden, the lead author
of the Cambridge 'Languages of the Andes' and another world expert in
the field.

If you have research plans that you would like to discuss with any of
these professors, please contact either of us by email:  for Andean
linguistics, Paul Heggarty (pah1003 AT cam.ac.uk);  or for Andean
archaeology, David Beresford-Jones (dgb27 AT cam.ac.uk).  Please
indicate briefly who you would like to meet and what you would hope to
discuss.

Meetings would take place in London, on Friday 19th September.
Depending on numbers, we hope to be able to provide contributions to
train fares for researchers to attend.

Best wishes,

   Paul Heggarty and David Beresford-Jones
   (McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research, University of
Cambridge)

P.S.  For more on our UK-Latin America Link Programme project, please
see:  www.arch.cam.ac.uk/ala/

Please note that the symposia in our programme are necessarily
restricted to small numbers and by invitation only, so unfortunately
we are not able to extend general invitations to these events.

On behalf of the organising committee for the
Cambridge & London Symposia on Archaeology and Linguistics in the
Andes

Professor Colin Renfrew

Dr Paul Heggarty

Dr David Beresford-Jones

Dr Adrian Pearce