Comparative Arawakan Histories : Rethinking Language Family and Culture Area in Amazonia

The first synthesis of the writings of ethnologists, historians, and anthropologists on contemporary Arawakan cultures Before they were largely decimated and dispersed by the effects of European colonization, Arawak-speaking peoples were the most widespread language family in Latin America and the Caribbean, and they were the first people Columbus encountered in the Americas. Comparative Arawakan Histories, in paperback for the first time, examines social structures, political hierarchies, rituals, religious movements, gender relations, and linguistic variations through historical perspectives to document sociocultural diversity across the diffused Arawakan diaspora. Contents......Page 2 Acknowledgments......Page 3 Introduction......Page 5 PART I: Languages, Cultures, and Local Histories......Page 16 The Arawakan Matrix: Ethos, Language, and History in Native South America......Page 17 2 Arawak Linguistic and Cultural Identity through Time: Contact, Colonialism, and Creolization......Page 30 3 Historical Linguistics and Its Contribution to Improving Knowledge of Arawak......Page 42 PART 2: Hierarchy, Diaspora, and New Identities......Page 53 4 Rethinking the Arawakan Diaspora: Hierarchy, Regionality, and the Amazonian Formative......Page 54 5 Social Forms and Regressive History: From the Campa Cluster to the Mojos and from the Mojos to the Landscaping Terrace-Builders of the Bolivian Savanna......Page 66 6 Piro, Apurina, and Campa: Social Dissimilation and Assimilation as Historical Processes in Southwestern Amazonia......Page 78 7 Both Omphalos and Margin: On How the Pa'ikwene (Palikur) See Themselves to Be at the Center and on the Edge at the Same Time......Page 90 PART 3: Power, Cultism, and Sacred Landscapes......Page 103 8 A New Model of the Northern Arawakan Expansion......Page 104 9 Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Woman: Fertility Cultism and Historical Dynamics in the Upper Rio Negro Region......Page 116 10 Secret Religious Cults and Political Leadership: Multiethnic Confederacies from Northwestern Amazonia......Page 129 11 Prophetic Traditions among the Baniwa and Other Arawakan Peoples of the Northwest Amazon......Page 139 References Cited......Page 152 Contributors......Page 168 Index......Page 170 THE RELATIONSHIP between language and culture has been the subject of much speculation in Western philosophy and social sciences.