I’ve recently been turned on to some cool art from South America circa 1000 BCE. As a believer that art without context is less meaningful, I’d like to learn about the civilizations which inhabited what is now Colombia and Ecuador prior to the Incan conquest in the 1400’s. Is there a “Pre-Columbian civilizations for dummies” kind of work which captures the best scholarship on this subject, with particular focus on the “minor” cultures as opposed to the Incans or Mayans?
The stuff I got turned on to in particular is Jamacoaque, which turns up not too much on a Google search except antiquities sales (and apparently a reference in The L-Word, one of whose characters apparently had a piece from that group). So any specific references to those guys would be especially valued.
Well, I’m not particularly well informed on that area in that period, but I will say that you will have better luck searching “Jama-Coaque” as a hyphenated phrase or else Jama Coaque" as two seperate words. It’s from the Jama valley of Ecuador in the coastal province of Manabi.
Here’s an excerpted chapter/article ( as a pdf ) from a book called Archaeology of Formative Ecuador, that can at least serve as just a little bit of an intro to the ancient culture of the area:
But a general work, it surely ain’t ;). I’m afraid you’ll have to wait for someone who knows this topic better to come along to get a solid recomendation for what you are looking for.
And there’s much more on that under the Hispanicized rendering of Tiahuanaco – but be prepared to wade through a lot of “Ancient Astronauts” glurge if you search under that spelling. {insert vomit smiley}
This site features a chart of pre-Inca Andean cultures by dates, with links to articles on each.
It seemed that most of the private bus lines in Peru were named after various civilizations that were in the region, thus you can ride “Los Chankas” and so forth. They still seem to be a part of the local imagination, and there were a lot of small, cheap magazine-like pubications in bookstores on the former civilizations of the area. I imagine that you’d get a whole lot more info searching in Spanish, some on net searches but a whole lot more if you’re fortunate to get down there and ask around at bookstores.
“The Incas and Their Ancestors” by Michael Moseley is an interesting source about pre-incan societies. It does start off with the Incas themselves, but the majority of the book is about the rise of civilization prior to the Incas. It covers art, technology, archeological sites, gravesites, etc… I highly recommend it.