MONUMENTS, EMPIRES, AND RESISTANCE: THE ARAUCANIAN POLITY AND RITUAL NARRATIVES

"From 1550 to 1850, the Araucanian polity in southern Chile was a center of political resistance to the intruding Spanish empire. In this book, Tom D. Dillehay examines the resistance strategies of the Araucanians and how they incorporated Andean knowledge and used mounds and other sacred monuments to reorganize their political and cultural life in order to unite against the Spanish. Drawing on anthropological research conducted over three decades, Dillehay focuses on the development of leadership, shamanism, ritual landscapes, and power relations and on how healing ceremonies performed at actively used mounds today give meaning to the past and reveal the social and cosmological principles by which the Araucanians have organized their society. His study combines recent developments in social theory with the archaeological, ethnographic, and historical records." "Monuments, Empires, and Resistance is an indispensable text for all archaeologists interested in the social, ideological, and demographic processes that construct and maintain mound building and mound worship in the past. This book details for the first time ethnographic ritual narratives that reveal the kin relations between mounds and living shamans. Dillehay illuminates these complex processes and the changing consciousness of the people who built and live with the mounds."--BOOK JACKET.