The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru

By Di Hu

Examines the long-term social conditions that enabled large-scale rebellions in late Spanish colonial Peru
 
The Fabric of Resistance: Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru documents the impact of Spanish colonial institutions of labor on identity and social cohesion in Peru. Through archaeological and historical lines of evidence, Di Hu examines the long-term social conditions that enabled the large-scale rebellions in the late Spanish colonial period in Peru. Hu argues that ordinary people from different backgrounds pushed back against the top-down identity categories imposed by the Spanish colonial government and in the process created a cosmopolitan social landscape that later facilitated broader rebellion.
 
Hu’s case study is Pomacocha, the site of an important Spanish colonial hacienda (agricultural estate) and obraje (textile workshop). At its height, the latter had more than one hundred working families and sold textiles all over the Andes. Through analysis of this site, Hu explores three main long-term causes of rebellions against Spanish oppression. First, the Spanish colonial economy provided motivation and the social spaces for intercaste (indigenous, African, and mestizo) mixing at textile workshops. Second, new hybrid cultural practices and political solidarity arose there that facilitated the creation of new rebellious identities. Third, the maturation in the eighteenth century of popular folklore that reflected the harsh nature of Spanish labor institutions helped workers from diverse backgrounds gain a systemic understanding of exploitation.
 
This study provides a fresh archaeological and historical perspectives on the largest and most cosmopolitan indigenous-led rebellions of the Americas. Hu interweaves analyses of society at multiple scales including fine-grained perspectives of social networks, demography, and intimate details of material life in the textile workshop. She examines a wide range of data sources including artifacts, food remains, architectural plans, account books, censuses, court documents, contracts, maps, and land title disputes.
 

• Language: English
• Publisher: University Alabama Press
• Release date: Feb 22, 2022
• ISBN: 9780817393885

Di Hu

Di Hu is Associate Professor in the School of Civil Engineering, at Central South University, China. He obtained his PhD from Central South University, on transportation engineering. He has been researching prestressed concrete structures for over 20 years, including on bridge load tests, and has worked on the design of over ten bridges. He has previously been a visiting scholar at the University of British Columbia, as well as being assigned by the China Ministry of Railways to Nigeria as part of an expert group on bridge engineering and steel bridge maintenance. He is the author of and monographs, as well as numerous research articles.

Book preview

THE FABRIC OF RESISTANCE

HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY IN SOUTH AMERICA

Series Editors

Pedro P. Funari and Jacob J. Sauer

Editorial Advisory Board

Réginald Augier

Lúcio Menezes

Charles E. Orser Jr.

Jeffrey Quilter

Melisa Salerno

Mary Van Buren

Parker VanValkenburgh

Andrés Zarankin

THE FABRIC OF RESISTANCE

Textile Workshops and the Rise of Rebellious Landscapes in Colonial Peru

Di Hu

THE UNIVERSITY OF ALABAMA PRESS

Tuscaloosa

The University of Alabama Press

Tuscaloosa, Alabama 35487-0380

uapress.ua.edu

Copyright © 2022 by Di Hu

All rights reserved.

Inquiries about reproducing material from this work should be addressed to the University of Alabama Press.

Typeface: Minion Pro

Cover images: Sixteenth-century Inka tunic pattern; courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, purchase, Fletcher Fund, Claudia Quentin Gift, and Harris Brisbane Dick Fund, 2017; colonial-era map of study area; Bautista Saavedra, Defensa de los derechos de Bolivia ante el gobierno Argentino en el litigio de fronteras con la republica del Perú, 1906

Cover design: Lori Lynch

The figures are available through CC by 4.0.

Cataloging-in-Publication data is available from the Library of Congress.

ISBN: 978-0-8173-2115-4

E-ISBN: 978-0-8173-9388-5

To the pueblo of Pomacocha and in memory of Juan Teodulfo Palomino Salvatierra

CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

Acknowledgments

Introduction: From Fugitives to the Most Addicted to Revolution

1. Legacies of Inca Imperialism

2. Losing Ground, Expanding Horizons (1640–1740)

3. Embers of Resistance in the Shadow of the Workshop (1690–1760)

4. Rising Cosmopolitanism in the Age of Andean Insurrections (1770–1815)

5. Hats of Many Colors: Identity Formation in the Wars of Independence (1814–1824)

Conclusion: Rebellious Networks and Landscapes as the Fabric of Resistance

Abbreviations

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ILLUSTRATIONS

FIGURES

Figures are available through CC by 4.0.

I.1. Approximate extent of the Spanish colonial province of Vilcashuamán

I.2. Stacked bar graph of the number of documented revolts and rebellions (Peru and Bolivia) in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries

I.3. Map of places mentioned in the book

1.1. Location of Yanawilka in relation to Inca settlements and travel times by foot

1.2. Rocky landscape of Yanawilka

1.3. Aerial photo of the site of Yanawilka and locations of the two rocky outcrops called Yanawilka and Saqapayoq

1.4. Map of the excavation units in relation to structures, topography, and large rocky outcrops at Yanawilka

1.5. Map of nearest locations of arrowroot and cassava growing areas to Yanawilka

1.6. Map of Conde and Tanquihua lands in the province of Vilcashuamán

1.7. Three Inca tall-necked jar lugs found in Unit Y1 underneath foundation stones

1.8. Artistic reconstruction of the mitmaq settlement of Yanawilka and its surrounding landscape

1.9. Reducciones, haciendas, and land-loss patterns of the Condes and Tanquihuas from 1533 to 1600

2.1. Evolution of landholdings of the community of Vischongo, 1533–1690

3.1. General configuration of the obraje of Pomacocha

3.2. Architectural layout of the obraje, functions of the rooms reconstructed from colonial descriptions, archaeological excavations, and geophysical survey

3.3. Justified access graph of the obraje of Pomacocha

3.4. Intervisibility graph of the obraje of Pomacocha

3.5. Histogram of intervisibility indices at the obraje of Pomacocha showing overall high intervisibility

3.6. Connectivity and integration of axial lines

3.7. Integration of convex spaces at the obraje of Pomacocha

3.8. Excavation units in the obraje of Pomacocha

3.9. Northern profile of the one-by-one-meter extension of Unit 1

3.10. Notable ceramics from Locus 10, midden

4.1. Communities with documented support for the Tupac Amaru II rebellion in the region of Ayacucho

5.1. Locations discussed in chapter superimposed on detail of a facsimile of an 1801 map of the intendancy of Huamanga by Intendant Demetrio O’Higgins

5.2. Geographic distribution of castas and españoles in 1792 and in 1826

5.3. Map of the distribution of haciendas, estancias, and obrajes of the partido of Vilcashuamán in relation to doctrinas, parishes, and pueblos

5.4. Population change from 1792 to 1826 showing a general increase in population in areas with many haciendas, estancias, and obrajes

5.5. Demographic change of castas from 1792 to 1826 overlaid with the rebel Morochuco communities that the royalists burned

5.6. Distribution of the clusters of surname affinity through time in Vilcashuamán province/partido

5.7. Comparison of men’s and women’s surname clusters in 1826

5.8. Percentage casta/Spanish and population size of communities in Vilcashuamán in 1826

5.9. Graph of the inverse relationship between the percentage of castas/Spanish and the total population size of a community

5.10. Distribution of Morochuco communities with heatmap of the distribution of high proportions of Native Andeans

5.11. Demographic composition of Vilcashuamán communities in 1826

TABLES

1.1. Plant foods recovered through flotation and starch grain analysis and their ecological zones

1.2. Faunal remains and their distribution at Yanawilka

1.3. Charred bone proportion by NISP and mass of Y1 to the other three structures (Y2 + Y3 + Y4)

2.1. State profits (real hacienda) in tax assessments from Vilcashuamán province, 1717–1772, in pesos

2.2. Unique surname proportions of men and women in colonial Peru

2.3. Summary of available ratios of men to women in repartimientos, 1570–1772

3.1. Inventories of Pomacocha in 1681 and 1689

3.2. Types of spaces in an archetypal obraje

3.3. Main types of obrajes

3.4. Distribution of raw counts of plant and animal remains recovered by unit inside the Pomacocha obraje

5.1. Adult male surname clusters in 1826 census of indios of the partido of Vilcashuamán

5.2. Adult male surname clusters generated from dataset that included both male and female surnames of the 1826 census of indios in the partido of Vilcashuamán

5.3. Adult female surname clusters generated from dataset that included both male and female surnames of the 1826 census of indios in the partido of Vilcashuamán

5.4. Distribution of surname clusters among men and women of the indio caste in 1826, partido of Vilcashuamán

5.5. Unique surname proportions over time in the Peruvian Andes (1780–1826)

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

This book would not exist without the help of many people. Primarily, I thank the community of Pomacocha. The community of Pomacocha’s long history of struggle against injustice continues to this day.

I would like to thank my core excavation team, who were strong and supportive during a challenging field season: my codirector, Alicia Miranda; Edward Gutiérrez; Walter Najarro; Vilma Quispe; Hilda Bellido; and Milagros Zaga. In the community of Pomacocha, I am especially grateful to the Antonio Raymondi High School class of 2011 for their support and enthusiasm for the project. Much gratitude goes to Teodosio Huamaní and Juan Teodulfo Palomino, fellow enthusiasts of Pomacocha’s storied history. Their selfless dedication to their community and to its history is very admirable, and they enthusiastically volunteered their time and knowledge to the project. Pomacochano archaeologist Baldor Eusebio also volunteered his support for the project and was full of integrity at all times. The communities of Chanin, Chito, Vischongo, and especially Vilcashuamán were supportive and welcoming. Radio Chaski’s Christian Arango was always full of professionalism. I would like to thank the Cisneros and Najarro families of Vilcashuamán, especially Ruben Cisneros, Zósima Cárdenas, and Teodosia Ochoa. Others who helped in the field include Héctor Carhuas, Juan Carlos Arango, Iara Cury, Sergio Canchari, Ruben Cisneros, and Alberto Tello.

The core laboratory analysis team was truly a pleasure to work with: Hector Carhuas, Ruddy Huillca, Sonia Laurente, Rosmery López de la Cruz, Henry Navarro, Carina Paullo, and Alberto Tello. They had amazing dedication to archaeology, and I will always remember our trip to Pongora to eat pacay fruit and our conversations over chicharrones de chancho, pollo a la brasa, and ceviche. I would also like to acknowledge Karina Aranda, Anays Amorín, and Betsy Merino for their help during lab analysis. Víctor Vásquez and Teresa Rosales Tham of ARQUEOBIOS were the consummate professionals.

The Dirección Desconcentrada de Cultura de Ayacucho and the Ministry of Culture-Peru were very helpful during the permit application process. The Dirección Desconcentrada de Cultura de Ayacucho was especially helpful during the excavation season, and I gratefully acknowledge the director, Mario Cueto, José Amorín, and Jorge Soto for their unwavering support throughout all stages of this archaeological project. In the various archives visited, Yolanda Auqui of the Archivo General de la Nación (Lima); Juan Gutiérrez of the Archivo Regional de Ayacucho; Elino Caravassi of the Biblioteca Nacional del Perú; Alexander Ortegal of the Museo Nacional de Arqueología, Antropología e Historia del Perú; and Padre Percy Quispe of the Archivo Arzobispal de Ayacucho stand out as especially friendly and helpful. Over the years, various individuals have provided helpful advice about various aspects of fieldwork, history, and analysis: Sarah Abraham, Sergio Canchari, Teresa Carrasco, James Cheshire, Michael Chuchón, Enrique González Carré, Jorge Hidalgo Lehuedé, Sabine Hyland, Danielle Kurin, Ellen Lofaro, Víctor Maqque, Rosario Muñoz, Bruce Owen, Katharina Schreiber, Karen Spalding, Parker Van Valkenburgh, and Barbara Wolff. I am especially indebted to Miriam Salas, whose books on the obrajes of Vilcashuamán inspired me to do this archaeological project, and to Enrique González Carré and Teresa Carrasco Cavero, who helped me at various stages of fieldwork. María Benavides was a generous host and conversationalist in Lima on several occasions.

Other colleagues and friends who have helped me overcome many obstacles along the book’s journey are Julie-Anne Bouchard-Perron, Katie Chiou, Anna Harkey, Julie Wesp, and Krystal Strong. I also thank my mentors Christine Hastorf, Kent Lightfoot, and Steve Shackley. Christine Hastorf was especially supportive throughout my scholarly journey, and I am indebted to her in many ways. I gratefully acknowledge Kylie Quave for her efficient copyediting and supportive comments. I also thank my editor, Wendi Schnaufer, for being enthusiastic about my book project from the beginning and being efficient, supportive, and understanding throughout this whole process.

I gratefully acknowledge the generous funding that made this book’s research and writing possible: the John L. Simpson Memorial Research Fellowship, from the Institute for International Studies at University of California, Berkeley; a research abroad fellowship from Fulbright-Hays; a fieldwork grant from Wenner-Gren; the Wenner-Gren Hunt Postdoctoral Fellowship; the Bancroft Library Study Award; the Stahl Endowment; and a fellowship from the Ford Foundation.

My parents, Jiajian and Sulan, have worked extremely hard to make a better life for me and my little brother over the years, and I am grateful for their love. This book honors the memories of my grandparents, who were peasants for most of their lives and mostly illiterate. I know they would be proud to see how far our family has come.

I am grateful to Adam for always believing in my ideas. I thank him for our shared life together and the great efforts he put in to make this research project a reality. I also thank him for countless hours of taking care of our small, very particular, and sometimes reflux-stricken child, Suyana, so I could work on the book. Those many hours of holding sleeping baby Suyana perfectly still at a specific incline while your legs went numb will not be forgotten, by you at least.

INTRODUCTION

From Fugitives to the Most Addicted to Revolution

On September 13, 1729, Nicolás Huamán, the elected mayor of the textile workers of Pomacocha village, submitted a petition to the Protector of Natives in the city of Huamanga, Peru. He had made a perilous three-day journey from Pomacocha to Huamanga. He pleaded in the voice and name of the community of the Indians of the textile workshop of Pomacocha that the Spanish administrators Don Domingo López del Pozo and Don Alonso García de Araujo be removed from their posts.¹ Huamán complained that the workers were illegally exploited and imprisoned and asked to be freed from slavery. According to Huamán, López del Pozo and García de Araujo had previously administered the textile workshop for a period of eighteen years (1701–19). During that time, they had illegally shut the one hundred or so workers and their families inside the textile workshop and forced them to work off an illegally imposed debt of 30,000 pesos, equal to at least sixty thousand days’ wages. The workers toiled from four in the morning to eleven at night, including illegally on Sundays and holidays. Children as young as eight were also forced to work and prevented from receiving religious instruction. The administrators only left their posts when a major earthquake hit the area in 1719, killing most of the workers, who were locked inside the workshop. Their sudden return to the administration in 1729 came after maneuvering out a more well-liked administrator, Friar Gómez. López del Pozo and García de Araujo threatened once again to put the workers in virtual slavery.

Huamán and his community endured much heartache all those years, from constant work and hunger in prison-like environments to the devastation of the community by the massive earthquake in 1719. The general epidemic of 1720–26 also affected his community, killing up to 40 percent of the total Andean population.² After enduring such hardships, Huamán and his community resisted the return of their unscrupulous overlords. He asked that the powerful hand of the Protector of Natives provide justice and shelter to the extremely poor and overlooked workers of Pomacocha. He begged for a judge who was not from Huamanga because the rich and powerful administrators were in collusion with the court officials there. His 1729 complaint failed, probably due to the webs of collusion that he had feared. Having exhausted legal options, the workers of Pomacocha subsequently voted with their feet. They fled the workshop en masse and did not return until Friar Gómez was reinstated a couple of years later.³ They understood that with the earthquake and general epidemic, labor was in short supply, giving them leverage to resist successfully.

Less than one hundred years later, the Native Andeans of the Ayacucho region, where Pomacocha is located, became notorious for their revolutionary fervor. In 1815, the bishop of Huamanga wrote, The Indians were the most addicted to the revolution . . . and their independence their principal attraction.⁴ Soon, this revolutionary fervor made possible the independence of Spanish South America. With the help of the English general William Miller, the workers of Pomacocha and neighboring communities took over the textile workshop and converted it into a key rebel base in 1821.⁵ General Simón de Bolívar, arguably the most prominent liberator of South America, stayed overnight in Pomacocha in 1824, only three months before the decisive battle for South American independence near Huamanga.⁶ He was warmly greeted in Pomacocha by the community and the Native Andean governor they had elected.

Far from a straightforward story of rags to revolution, the case of Pomacocha raises several questions. First, what prevented the workers of Pomacocha from violently rebelling against López del Pozo and García de Araujo during the eighteen years they were in power? Second, when they did overthrow their overlords in 1821, why did it take so long? From the workshop’s establishment in 1681 to 1794, there was not a single recorded instance of forceful resistance.

Pomacocha’s case is not unusual. Open acts of revolt, rebellion, and revolution have been curiously infrequent despite their prominence in the annals of history. Their rarity is odd given that the oppressed usually vastly outnumbered the oppressors. Popular understandings of this pattern of resistance (or lack thereof) have an undercurrent of victim blaming. For example, in 2018, the rapper Kanye West said in an interview, When you hear about slavery for 400 years . . . for 400 years? That sound like a choice.⁷ When revolts, rebellions, and revolutions against oppression do happen, almost all are ruthlessly crushed or the gains for the oppressed are quickly reversed. Although open acts of armed resistance are relatively rare, nonviolent forms of resistance—the weapons of the weak—are continuously present but supposedly rarely change the rules of the game.⁸

When they do happen, revolts, rebellions, and revolutions seem to be contagious. What could explain the long periods of relative peace followed by clusters of open and coordinated rebellions?

In this book, I argue that pessimistic accounts of resistance fail to recognize how nonviolent, everyday forms of resistance and forceful widespread coordinated resistance reinforce each other. In other words, moments of forceful and coordinated resistance are not isolated, random, or sporadic incidents. Rather, they are symptomatic of the long-term development of social landscapes conducive to coordinated social movements. Such social landscapes of resistance are built from everyday routine forms of resistance. Such landscapes remain even if particular social movements are crushed. By investigating the link between coordinated, violent resistance on one hand and nonviolent, everyday forms of resistance on the other, we can avoid privileging the most visible revolts, rebellions, and revolutions as the only real kinds of resistance. Ultimately, this book explores the longue-durée⁹ of resistance—the resilient underlying currents of history that inform short-term events like rebellions.

Broadly, this book examines the social movements of the late colonial Andes (1780s–1820s) from a bottom-up perspective. The Andes saw a wave of forceful revolts and rebellions that began to be more coordinated among various groups, most famously the Tupac Amaru II rebellion in Peru, which was the largest indigenous-led uprising ever in the Americas. The period from the late eighteenth to the early nineteenth centuries was a time of serious challenges to colonial regimes globally, but the social landscapes of the ordinary people who made up the bulk of the fighting forces are not well understood. Before the late eighteenth century, coordinated, forceful resistance was rare in the Andes because the Spanish colonial regime sowed mistrust through promoting social hierarchies based on racialized castes. Understanding how the common folk put aside long-standing animosities that mapped onto class, caste, and ethnic lines is crucial to understanding why the rebellions quickly spread through the Andes starting in the late eighteenth century.

Pomacocha is an ideal case study through which to study how long-term cumulative changes in social landscapes enabled local revolts to spread into general rebellion. Pomacocha is located in Vilcashuamán province, in the modern region of Ayacucho, Peru (fig. I.1). It was the site of an important Spanish colonial hacienda and obraje, or agricultural estate and textile workshop, that, at its height, had more than one hundred working families and sold textiles all over the Andes. The textile workers at Pomacocha, as at other obrajes, were from diverse castes: indios (natives), mestizos (mixed native and European ancestry), and poor españoles (Spaniards). Most workers hailed from different Native Andean ethnic groups and were subsumed under the term indio, or Indian. Labor at Spanish colonial Pomacocha was a mix of debt slavery and enslaved and prison labor. Prisoners had to serve out their sentences laboring for the obrajes. Textile workshops, mines, and agricultural estates were the three pillars of the colonial Spanish economy that became principal settings and targets of revolts and rebellions in the late colonial period, when we see a sharp rise in the number of local revolts and regionally coordinated armed rebellions (fig. I.2).¹⁰ With documented forceful resistance only starting in the late eighteenth century, the historical pattern of resistance at Pomacocha reflects the wider pattern of increasing forceful resistance in the Andes during the late colonial period.

CAPITALISM AND THE EMERGENCE OF BIOLOGICAL CONCEPTIONS OF RACE

Capitalism and the Enlightenment are impossible to ignore in any social history of the Age of Revolution. The Spanish colonial Andes can provide new insights into the social history of the development of capitalism and how ordinary people experienced Enlightenment projects. Many have explored how modern conceptions of biological race were born out of colonial projects of capitalism and the Enlightenment.¹¹ Nevertheless, the role that colonial workhouse-type environments played in the rise of capitalism and biological conceptions of race is not well understood. The foundational texts on the development of capitalism, by Braudel, Foucault, and Marx, mainly focused on European historical trajectories and barely considered the role that the New World colonial situation played in the rise of capitalism. How did the social innovations that developed inside Spanish colonial obrajes like the one at Pomacocha contribute to the emergence of capitalism and biological conceptions of race? How were the projects of capitalism and biological conceptions of race resisted?¹²

According to some interpretations, obrajes operated under capitalist logic and were the direct forerunners of industrial factories or at least created the social conditions suitable for capitalism.¹³ Others argue that the obrajes’ inefficiency and reliance on coercion precluded them from providing the framework for later industrial factories.¹⁴ As such, obrajes represented an economic evolutionary dead end parallel to, and not part of, the development of capitalistic factories. More generally, the role that colonial Latin American economies played in the rise of capitalism, both local and European, has been hotly debated.¹⁵ Scholars of Latin America generally agree that the colonial economy, because of heavy reliance on coercion, was not capitalism in the strict Marxist sense of being based on free wage labor.¹⁶ Most scholars would agree that colonial Latin America had its own forms of capitalism, based on commercial capitalism aided by coercion and state collusion with monopolistic tendencies.¹⁷ This book argues that, while the obrajes themselves did not operate under capitalist logic in the Marxist sense, the social changes brought about by the obrajes and the techniques of social control developed in them created favorable conditions for the rise of colonial capitalism. The techniques of social control created racialized hierarchies in the workplace, which naturalized the association between a particular racial caste and the type of work. Spanish administrators sowed mistrust among the different underclasses by putting them in adversarial roles in labor institutions like the obraje. I argue that top-down juridical identity categories reinforced colonial capitalism, but Native Andeans resisted it on the local scale by creating a more cosmopolitan culture, out of which new rebellious identities—such as the Morochucos—sprang.

Image: Figure I.1. Approximate extent of the Spanish colonial province of Vilcashuamán, which comprised the contemporary provinces of Cangallo, Huanca Sancos, Victor Fajardo, and Vilcas Huamán. Digital elevation model generated from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 3 Arc-Second dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13247312

Figure I.1. Approximate extent of the Spanish colonial province of Vilcashuamán, which comprised the contemporary provinces of Cangallo, Huanca Sancos, Victor Fajardo, and Vilcas Huamán. Digital elevation model generated from Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM) 3 Arc-Second dataset. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13247312

Image: Figure I.2. Stacked bar graph of the number of documented revolts and rebellions (Peru and Bolivia) in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13247378

Figure I.2. Stacked bar graph of the number of documented revolts and rebellions (Peru and Bolivia) in eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.13247378

Given the conditions that worked against the occurrence of coordinated rebellions, why did a wave of revolts and rebellions then grip the Andes starting in the late eighteenth century? Much of the historical literature focused on the shorter-term causes involving changes in tax policies or the abrogation of privileges, for example, but is limited in addressing the long-term, bottom-up causes.

This book explores three main long-term causes. First, while Spanish ideology proscribed intercaste social interaction, the Spanish colonial economy provided motivation and the social spaces for such interaction. Textile workshops, in particular, acted as the engines driving mass migration of diverse Andeans, escaping either from or to textile workshops to seek better labor conditions. The mass migration was likely gendered at times, with men doing most of the long-distance migration to escape official labor obligations, and the women, who were officially exempt from such labor obligations, staying closer to their natal homes to preserve usufruct rights for the next generation. The male migrants would then marry the female locals, creating exogamous kinship networks and dynamic social landscapes. Second, within the walls of the textile workshops, cultural mixing and political solidarity arose. Long-term cultural convergence also smoothed the way for intercaste alliances. When these alliances were activated in conscious acts of resistance, from legal petitions to coordinated escape and rebellion, they often drove the formation of new, cosmopolitan identities. Third, the maturation of popular folklore in the eighteenth century surrounding the Faustian nature of Spanish labor institutions helped workers from diverse backgrounds gain a systemic understanding of exploitation. This book discusses the link between colonial textile workshops and these enduring folktales. By examining the social changes in a community deeply enmeshed in the colonial economy, this book offers a view of how colonial capitalism evolved and was resisted at the local scale from a bottom-up perspective.

AN ARCHAEOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIAL LANDSCAPES

How did Native Andeans create a social landscape conducive to rebellion? First, what is a social landscape? By social landscape, I mean the context in which humans survive, build community, and make meaning.¹⁸ The context itself is created and modified over many generations of human interaction.¹⁹ On a broad level, the social landscape is how humans organize themselves over the physical landscape that they helped create: how they produce food, how they ensure access to a variety of resources critical to biological and social reproduction, how their kin are distributed across the landscape, how they organize ritual circuits, and how they manage political alliances. On a more intimate level, the social landscape is also the spatial structuring of daily activities through architecture and settlement planning.²⁰ Social landscapes are palimpsests, and new social landscapes are interwoven with the old. Economic systems are accumulative and incorporative,²¹ as are value systems and identity.

I approach social landscapes from the combined lens of political geography and social network analysis. The discipline of political geography is concerned with how state-society interactions create and are mediated through social space, especially bounded territory. The character of the social space has critical implications for identity and civil society formation.²² Archaeology is well suited to studying political ecology, a subdiscipline of political geography, which focuses on how politics results in differential access to and control of resources.²³ Such differences can affect environmental health and the sustainability of livelihoods, especially for people with less access.²⁴ Political ecology is the study of the struggle over both resources and meaning, or the discourses of power that inform the struggle.²⁵ More recently, in contrast to the focus on bounded territory, archaeologists have explored the utility of representing social space through networks.²⁶ For the purposes of this book, the two main advantages of a network approach versus a territorial approach are 1) it better represents the social interactions that cut across juridical boundaries²⁷ and 2) it has more explanatory power regarding how well information, resources, and rebellion can spread through the network depending on its configuration.²⁸ Social relations in network analyses are represented by two-dimensional networks that do not account for political geography: the intertwined nature of geographical distance and topography, ecology, culture, uneven state capacity, and cumulative effects of historical landscapes. We gain a more complete understanding of social landscapes through combining political geography with social network analysis by layering different analyses onto one another using geographic information systems (GIS) software.

Archaeological methods are uniquely suited to uncovering past social landscapes, especially absent written documentation. The material traces that people leave behind in the form of artifacts, food remains, architecture, and landscapes tell us much about what their social landscapes looked like. Even when written evidence is available, doing a bottom-up social