BCDSS Working Papers

In the land of the apu: Cerro Llamocca as a sacred mountain and central place in the pre-Columbian Andes of southern Peru

Wed, 24 May 2023 00:00:00 GMT

In the land of the apu: Cerro Llamocca as a sacred mountain and central place in the pre-Columbian Andes of southern Peru Mader, Christian; Reindel, Markus; Isla, Johny; Behl, Martin; Meister, Julia; Hölzl, Stefan Cerro Llamocca is a mountain with a summit elevation of 4,487 m asl in the southern Peruvian Andes. This paper presents a first overview of recent archaeological and paleoenvironmental research in its vicinity, and introduces new results from archaeological surveys and strontium isotope analyses. Our survey data show how the wider Cerro Llamocca area comprises an extensive complex of archaeological sites, composed of different sectors with public, domestic, and funerary architecture and rock shelters, occupied throughout the pre-Columbian period from the Early Archaic to the European invasion in 1532. Despite the extreme living conditions of this high-elevation environment, Cerro Llamocca includes the oldest archaeological site hitherto recorded in the larger region: a rock shelter (PAP-969) on its south-eastern slope with evidence of human occupation in the Early Archaic period ~ 8000 BCE. Human activity in the Cerro Llamocca area reached its zenith in the Middle Horizon (CE 600–1000), at a time of a dry climate and when an expansive Wari state incorporated the worship of mountain deities into an imperial strategy to dominate local people. Our strontium isotope analyses of archaeological human dental enamel from a funerary rock shelter (PAP-942), alongside modern plants as reference data, indicate that the people buried here originated in the adjacent highlands. At a broader level, we study the roles of Cerro Llamocca as a sacred mountain or apu and central place over a long-term perspective, and how these functions integrated and focused religious, ritual, social, political, and economic activities over this high-altitude complex. Its central place function was linked to its sacredness, but also to its topography, provision of shelter, and geographical proximity to a range of critical resources such as water, creating resource dependencies that shaped socio-economic cooperation and exploitation. Although Cerro Llamocca has progressively lost many of these roles since the beginning of the colonial period, local communities continue to revere it as a sacred mountain today.

Prostitution / Servitude / Slavery

Mon, 01 Jul 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Prostitution / Servitude / Slavery Münch, Birgit Ulrike This working paper seeks to explore the concept of asymmetrical dependency from an art and cultural historical perspective. Prostitution and sex work are central domains in which female dependency was negotiated and bargained over during the early modern period. The aim of this project is to modify the network of different asymmetrical dependencies as it relates to female occupations, in particular to female prostitution in Amsterdam in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, which is critically shaped by the role of the globalized metropolis in Dutch colonialism. The final section will focus on the concrete example of the exhibition on Dutch still lives “Augenlust,” co-curated by the author (LVR-Landesmuseum Bonn, 23.09.22– 20.02.23, held in cooperation with the Museum Allard Pierson Amsterdam), in which several cabinets were dedicated to the theme of asymmetrical dependency.

Moving Workers

Wed, 04 Oct 2023 00:00:00 GMT

Moving Workers Bernardi, Claudia; Müller, Viola Franziska; Vilhelmsson, Vilhelm; Stojić, Biljana; Marcon, Gabriele; Heinsen, Johan; Ressel, Magnus; Gunnlaugsson, Emil; Özbek, Müge; Rahi-Tamm, Aigi; Kussy, Angelina; Nail, Thomas Bernardi, Claudia; Müller, Viola Franziska; Stojić, Biljana; Vilhelmsson, Vilhelm This book explores how workers moved and were moved, why they moved, and how they were kept from moving. Combining global labour history with mobility studies, it investigates moving workers through the lens of coercion. The contributions in this book are based on extensive archival research and span Europe and North America over the past 500 years. They provide fresh historical perspectives on the various regimes of coercion, mobility, and immobility as constituent parts of the political economy of labour. Moving Workers shows that all struggles relating to the mobility of workers or its restriction have the potential to reveal complex configurations of hierarchies, dependencies, and diverging conceptions of work and labour relations that continuously make and remake our world.

Transcending Boundaries: Rethinking Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire Through Religious Conversion Practices

Wed, 01 May 2024 00:00:00 GMT

Transcending Boundaries: Rethinking Slave Agency in the Ottoman Empire Through Religious Conversion Practices Wagner, Veruschka; Gökçe, Zeynep Yeşim; Abacı, Zeynep Dörtok; Allahverdiyeva, Turkana This article explores the religious conversion of slaves in the Ottoman Empire and the Crimea as a profound and transforming event in the lives of slaves. We will analyze the conditions, reasons, and consequences of conversion by studying court records from different cities from the 16th to 18th centuries. It will also explore the relation between religious conversion and the agency of the slaves. The primary research inquiries that this working paper seeks to address are as follows: What impact did religious conversion have on the agency of the slaves? What was the impact of conversion on their lives (as well as the lives of their slave owners) during and after being enslaved? Do the circumstances and effects of conversion differ between male and female slaves? This study aims to elucidate these inquiries in an endeavor to offer a new perspective on the relation between enslavement and conversion.