The Aymara, A Persevering Indigenous Community

Figure 1: The Aymara

 

Today’s blog post will explore the vibrant culture of the Aymara (Figure 1), an indigenous population of the Andean highlands of southern Peru, northern Chile, and Bolivia.  The Aymara have a long history living and thriving in the Andean highlands, and despite interventions among ancient cultural groups and colonization by the Spanish they continue to persevere to this day.  This post will address the various aspects of their culture, including their language, dress, economics, subsistence strategies, and challenges to their way of life.

The Aymara received their name many centuries ago.  There is no known meaning to their name, and it is believed it is derived from a long-forgotten language no longer spoken in the region.  The name of their culture is also the name of their language.  The Aymara have and continue to reside primarily in the Lake Titicaca region of Bolivia and Peru, although many have migrated to urban centers throughout Chile and Peru (Figure 2).  Their populations are so abundant in the urban areas of Chile that they are the second largest indigenous population in the country.

Traditionally, the Aymara were and continue to be an agrarian society.  They grow a series of cultigens, including potatoes, corn, beans, chili peppers, and quinoa.  They traditionally raised a variety of camelids, specifically llama and alpaca, for meat and wool, as well as guinea pigs.  They also used to fish in the Lake Titicaca Basin, although these exploits have decreased due to the pollution of the lake that is causing various issues for the environment and to the Aymara communities.  Today, many Aymara either have permanently relocated to urban areas or temporarily move to the urban areas to make money for their families back in the highlands.

Figure 2: Aymara geographical distribution

Traditionally, the Aymara wore their hair in braids, with two braids for women and one for men.  Men today typically keep their hair short, but Aymara women still wear their hair long and in braids.  The Aymara traditionally and continue to be avid weavers, producing their own cloth and clothing from alpaca and llama wool.  They create vibrant and colorful clothing from natural and artificial dyes, which they used as trade goods in the past and today sell to interested parties.  Aymara not residing in urban areas typically wear their traditional clothing, which consists of long tunics for men and skirts and blouses for women.  They will also wear hats that cover their hair and ears.  These are also widely sold to locals and tourists.

The Aymara are very dedicated to preserving their cultural heritage.  This is due to relative isolation that occurred among them until recent decades.  Their homelands being in the Andean highlands made it difficult to reach them among outsider groups, and they were isolated due to the inaccessibility to regularly contact them.  This means that they have maintained much of their traditional ways as a result, and the recent contact with outsider groups unfortunately threatens this way of life.  The Aymara continue to teach their children their native language, and many Aymara, particularly women who reside in the highlands, do not know any other language.  Only those who rely on regular contact with Peruvian, Bolivians, and Chileans either speak conversational or fluent Spanish.  The push by the local governments toward more Spanish speaking Aymara has met some resistance due to the fear of a loss of cultural and traditional ways, which the Aymara are fiercely protective of.

Works Cited

Lewellen, Ted, Paul Broan and Winifred Mitchell. Aymara Indians - Adaptation and Survival in Southern Peru. September 1986. Electronic. 30 July 2019.

Minorities Rights Group. Aymara. 2019. Electronic. 30 July 2019.

Native Languages of the Americas. Aymara Indian Fact Sheet. 2015. http://www.bigorrin.org/aymara_kids.htm. 30 July 2019.

Owens, Matthew. Aymara Culture Protects Their Children from Psychological Distress. 3 February 2014. Electronic. 30 July 2019.

Applied Anthropology: Homelessness & Archaeology

Jessica Welch takes photos of the material cultural evidence left behind at a homeless site.  Source: Archaeology Magazine

The field of archaeology is undergoing a series of reformations at present, and one of those changes includes a push for archaeology and archaeologists to be more mindful in assisting local communities.  This is where Larry Zimmerman and Jessica Welch come in as they are pioneering and leading the way forward with the archaeology of homelessness.  Their archaeological work is providing new and greater insights into homeless communities, and it is their hope that this research can and will be used to better assist local homeless populations and resident communities.  This blog post will discuss their research and what specifically the archaeology of homelessness is.

The archaeology of homelessness is an area of inquiry involving the use of archaeological methods to identify and interpret the material culture evidence of homeless populations.  This is a field of study that Zimmerman happened upon by accident when he was working on a historic period site in St. Paul, Minnesota.  The site had been taken over by homeless groups for many years, and through systematic and required excavations to get to the historic site Zimmerman discovered years of evidence of the homeless occupation of the area.  Rather than discard the material as trash he noticed specific trends in the homeless populations' artifacts that very closely resembled other sites he had previously excavated. This piqued his interests into the possible research avenues of such an inquiry.

When Zimmerman moved onto a job in Indianapolis, Indiana, he began a more substantive research project into the archaeology of homelessness.  He included Jessica Welch in the project partially because she had been homeless for a period of time and her knowledge and experience could be useful in the project.  She later became a permanent member of the team, providing greater understanding to the creation the project and interpretation of its results. 

Zimmerman and Welch’s partnership resulted in the creation of a typology/classification system of various homeless sites throughout Indianapolis.  These sites are classified by use and chronology, demonstrating either temporary or permanent use as well as individual or larger group utilization.  Zimmerman and Welch also observed the material culture evidence left behind at these sites and made some startling realizations that shatter many stereotypical views about homeless individuals.  First, there was an abundance of a variety of food and alcoholic containers but very little evidence of drug use.  The food containers present at the site are most often fast food containers, which demonstrates that these are easy to obtain resources and also illustrates the ease of access homeless individuals have to these resources compared to food available in grocery stores.  When canned goods were present they were often unopened or crudely opened.  The reason was not due to a lack of interest or desire to consume them but the practicality of not being able to.  Many homeless people do not have a can opener or other means of opening the cans of food provided to them.  Zimmerman and Welch have advocated for the distribution of can openers if groups feel compelled to distribute canned goods, although they also point out the issues related to cooking such foods in certain places based on their site analyses. 

Another interesting discovery is the number of travel sized personal hygiene products found at the sites.  This demonstrates a desire among homeless individuals to maintain personal hygiene, but the majority of these items were unopened.  Again, the reason for this was a lack of resources to use them.  Without regularly available running water (let along clean running water) these items are appreciated but not able to be used by the homeless.  This demonstrates another need among the homeless and a better means of assisting them with cleanliness.

Zimmerman and Welch also identified a series of cached items, which are items stored while individuals make short term trips away from their base camps.  This is a system regularly utilized by foraging groups, of which homeless populations most resemble culturally.  These caches contain items of personal value to the homeless, such as photos and private possessions, as well as utilitarian items, such as personal medications and extra clothing.  These caches most often resemble piles of trash and are often collected and discarded by well meaning citizens or government agents meant to clean up public spaces.  Zimmerman and Welch oppose such disposal practices as they often cause further harm to the person and dignity of homeless individuals who lose their access to necessary medications or links to their pasts and present identities.

Ultimately, the information gained through Zimmerman and Welch’s work is opening up new information about homeless populations and more effective means of assisting them, which can be used by a variety of organizations and individuals that assist homeless individuals.  Zimmerman and Welch advocate for further research in urban and rural areas frequented by homeless populations as a means of better assisting those populations, particularly as these populations are diverse and there is no universal solution to aiding all of them. 

References

Zimmerman, L. J., & Welch, J. (2011). Displaced and Barely Visible: Archaeology and the Material Culture of Homelessness . Historical Archaeology, 67-85.

Zimmerman, L. J., Singleton, C., & Welch, J. (2010). Activism and creating a translational archaeology of homelessness. World Archaeology, 443-454.

Zimmerman, L., & Welch, J. (2006). Toward an Archaeology of Homelessness. Anthropology News, 54.

Extending the Family Tree: Recent Discoveries on the Denisovans Expand Our Knowledge of Human Evolution

On May 1, 2019 a startling new discovery was announced.  This announcement had been over 30 years in the making, and the wait was well worth it because this new information expands our current knowledge of hominids and human evolution.  Today’s blog post will discuss the implications of the discovery of a mandible fragment found in the Himalayan Mountains.

In 1980 a Tibetan monk discovered the fragment of a mandible (lower jaw bone) in the Baishiya Karst Cave in Xiahe, China.  This piece was eventually donated to the Lanzhou University, where it came into the possession of scholars Fahu Chen and Dongju Zhang.  They began studying the piece, and eventually they teamed up with researchers Svante Pääbo and Jean-Jacques Hublin of the Max Planck Institute.  Together and with respective teams of colleagues in China and Germany this group launched a study on the mandibular fragment. 

When initial DNA analyses failed (due to a lack of usable DNA in the specimen) they turned to protein analysis to determine the species to which this piece belonged.  They were successful with this analysis, isolating several proteins that they used to determine the origin species.  This led to the discovery that this mandible belonged to a member of the Denisovan species, which had only been previously identified through DNA of a lone finger bone.  They also were able to determine, through dental aging methods, that this individual was most likely an adolescent at their time of death.

These pieces of information are remarkable in and of themselves, but there was even more gleaned from this information.  The initial place of discovery, the Baishiya Karst Cave high in the Himalayan Mountains, meant that Denisovans were well adapted to high altitude living, which had until recently been associated solely with archaic Homo sapiens.  The presence of the Denisovan fossil at this location, as well as the discovery of a specific gene that allows for such adaptations (the EPAS1 allele) in Denisovan fossils, means that our hominid ancestors were far more advanced that previously thought.

This was not the only surprising discovery, however.  Previous work had demonstrated that modern Tibetans and various other human groups carry with them DNA from Neanderthal, Denisovan, and four yet to be identified hominid species.  This means that our hominid ancestors were not isolated species, as previously thought, but instead were different breeds of the same species or closely related species that were not only able to but were regularly interbreeding.  This process led to the passing on of many beneficial genes that continue to exist among modern humans today. 

Together, all of this information is creating quite the stir in the paleoanthropological and human evolution communities.  Once previously believed ideas and paradigms are shifting or being abandoned in the face of new evidence, and this additional knowledge is demonstrating how complex evolutionary relationships are.  It also demonstrates how advanced our hominid ancestors were, making way for new ideas and realizations about what it means to be human.

Bibliography

Chen, F., Welker, F., Shen, C.-C., Bailey, S. E., Bergmann, I., Davis, S., . . . Hublin, J.-J. (2019). A late Middle Pleistocene Denisovan mandible from the Tibetan Plateau. Nature, 409–412.

Koumoundouros, T. (2019, May 1). Jawbone of a Mysterious Denisovan Has Been Discovered in a Remote Cave in Tibet. Retrieved from Science Alert: https://www.sciencealert.com/archeologists-discover-why-the-mysterious-denisovans-had-high-altitude-adaptations

Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology. (2019, May 1). First hominins on the Tibetan      Plateau were Denisovans: Denisovan mandible likely represents the earliest hominin fossil on the Tibetan Plateau. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 30, 2019 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/05/190501131405.htm