Mapping the Sacred Landscape of the Ashaninka

Usually, the academic disciplines devoted to study the South American indigenous past have understood Andes and Amazonia as two different cultural areas. This approach has created an image of these two regions as almost entirely independent from each other. Sometimes even projecting an image of a complete separation between them. However, in the past few years, dissident voices coming from many disciplines have been suggesting that, albeit some clear differences exist between both areas, there are significant historical connections between Andes and Amazonia since pre-Columbian times. Whatever the nature and intensity of these interactions between Incas and western Amazonian groups, they were materialized in both Inca and Antis material culture and cosmology. Examples of this include the painted Inca colonial wooden beakers (keros) where one can see several images of war scenes between Incas and Amazonians; in the early colonial Quechua document Huarochirí Manuscript; the annual festivity of Qoyllur R’iti; or in the theater play Apu Ollantay. Still today one can find references about the Incas in the mythologies of several western Amazonian groups such as e.g. the Ashaninka as well as the Pano speaking Kaxinawá (Huni Kui) and Shipibo-Conibo. Most importantly and central for this project, there is growing evidence that these interactions between Incas and western Amazonian indigenous groups were also materialized in their landscape where both the Incas and Southern Arawak sacred sites often overlapped, suggesting that, cosmologically, the geographical sphere of influence of Andeans and Amazonians was more entangled than previously supposed.