Space-Time Perspectives on Early Colonial Moquegua

In this rich study of the construction and reconstruction of a colonised landscape, Prudence M. Rice takes an implicit political ecology approach in exploring encounters of colonisation in Moquegua, a small valley of southern Peru. Building on theories of spatiality, spatialisation, and place, she examines how politically mediated human interaction transformed the physical landscape, the people who inhabited it, and the resources and goods produced in this poorly known area. This book looks at the encounters between existing populations and newcomers from successive waves of colonisation, from indigenous expansion states (Wari, Tiwanaku, and Inka) to the foreign Spaniards, and the way each group re-spatialised the landscape according to its own political and economic ends. Viewing these spatialisations from political, economic, and religious perspectives, Rice considers both the ideological and material occurrences. Concluding with a special focus on the multiple space-time considerations involved in Spanish-inspired ceramics from the region, the book integrates the local and rural with the global and urban in analysing the events and processes of colonialism. It is a vital contribution to the literature of Andean studies and will appeal to students and scholars of archaeology, historical archaeology, history, ethnohistory, and globalisation.