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Glynn Custred

Hunting technologies in Andean cultureIn: Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes. Tome 66, 1979. pp. 7-19.

Citer ce document / Cite this document :

Custred Glynn. Hunting technologies in Andean culture. In: Journal de la Socit des Amricanistes. Tome 66, 1979. pp. 7-19.

doi : 10.3406/jsa.1979.2168

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HUNTING TECHNOLOGIES IN ANDEAN CULTUREby Glynn CUSTRED

Hunting as a subsistence strategy, particularly the hunting of deer andcamelids, was of prime importance in the development of early Andean culture ; first because hunting formed one of the principal means by which mantook possession of and adapted to the ecologically vertical environment of th eAndes, and secondly because it established a close relationship with camelidswhich eventually led to the domestication of llamas and alpacas.This paper will attempt to outline Andean hunting practices and their changingroles in Andean culture through time. For present purposes it is convenientto set up three hypothetical and very broad sequential stages of hunting inthe Andes as defined by its relative social and economic significance. Thefirst stage is that in which hunting, along with gathering and fishing, formeda central subsistence activity of small, probably nomadic societies. The secondis a long and regionally diversified transitional phase when populations wereshifting from economies based primarily on hunting and gathering to economiesbased on agriculture and herding. And the third stage is one in which huntingand gathering formed minor activities practiced only by small segments oflarge, socially stratified populations with well organized political and economicinstitutions.

The Hunting, Gathering and Fishing stageIt appears that a way of life clearly based on hunting was in evidence inthe Central Andes around 9,000 B.C. as witnessed by the number of projectileoints found at archaeological sites from that time onward. The climateof the Andes during that period was different than it is today, and the animalspecies which inhabited the region were more varied than at the present time.Besides the deer and camelids which still survive, giant sloth, mastodon andnative horses were abundant. Hunters pursued these animals with a tool kitincluding projectile weapons, knives, scrapers, bone awls and flaking tools,all indicating a way of life in which the hunting of herd animals played animportant role. It appears that this tradition spread rapidly throughout theAndes and southern South America.

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8 SOCIT DES AMRICANISTESIt is possible that this tradition and the projectile point technologies whichcharacterize it originated in South America. An alternative hypothesis,however, is that it was brought into the southern continent by populations

migrating from North America (Willey 1966 : 43-50). No matter which ofthese possibilities was indeed the case, there is little doubt that advances inhunting technology made it possible for early migrants to " explore new ecological niches ", as Willey puts it, and in this way to establish themselvesfirmly in the Andes of the early post-Pleistocene era.As the climate changed to something near its present form, and as the number f game animals was reduced to those represented by modern fauna, Andeanhunters and gatherers gradually adapted to the environments of differentAndean regions. The game hunted during this period, as revealed at Lauri-cocha II and at sites elsewhere in the Central Andes, were deer and wild camelids.Small game, such as vizcacha and birds, was probably also taken. Also ahost of wild seeds and plants were gathered.The weapons used by these early hunters were probably the spear and thespear thrower. Bows and arrows, says Thomas Lynch, may have also beenused at this time, despite contentions that this weapon was a relatively lateintroduction into South America. Bifaced knives, awls and small thumbscrapers for dressing hides were also parts of the hunter's tool kit. Thereis also some indication that the bolas might have been used.Caves and rock shelters provided housing for the hunters, and it is possiblethat simple reed huts may have also been built. Shallow pits with reed orstone wind breaks may have also been constructed for shelter (Lynch 1967 :55-56). Fire, says Lynch, was probably made by striking flint rather thanwith the drill or hearth.Perhaps the most important aspect of this period was the systematic use,by individual hunting groups, of the varied Andean environments. Therewere two dimensions to this variability. One was the complementarity ofcoastal and highland patterns of moisture. The other was the vertical arrangement of life zones within the highlands as determined by ascending altitude.The Andean climate during this period was moister and cooler than it istoday, thus what is now a desert coastal region was at that time a savannahlandscape which blossomed into lush meadows each year with the onset ofthe ocean fogs. These are the so-called " lomas ". During the rainy seasonin the highlands the coast remained dry. And during the dry season in thesierra the " lomas " bloomed. Camelids and deer migrated between the zoneson a seasonal basis, and the human population took full advantage of this seasonal pattern of movement in their subsistence activities. In some coastalareas hunting alternated with littoral gathering in accordance with the growthof the " lomas " and the presence of game on the coast. Another patternwas seasonal transhumance in which the hunters followed the game up anddown the vertical series of life zones of the mountain environment. The latteris seen in a number of local variations (Lynch 1967).According to Lynch the social organization of the pre-ceramic Andes wasdirectly affected by this pattern of transhumance and the diversity of life

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HUNTING TECHNOLOGIES IN ANDEAN CULTURE zones it included. Hunting and gathering groups came together and dispersedseasonally. Among the Andean hunters and gatherers there appear to havebeen two variations on this theme with further variations from place to placeand over time. One strategy was to station groups at camps in a single elevation zone with hunting expeditions going into the punas and paramos ona seasonal basis. Possibly only the able-bodied men went on these huntingtrips leaving the rest of the group in camps at lower altitudes. Another patternseems to have been the seasonal dispersal of small groups into the high elevation grasslands in search of game at one time of year, and coalescence ofthese groups at lower elevations when the vegetable resources of those zonescould support larger populations. Different component technologies, therefore, were developed to exploit different vertical life zones on a seasonal basis(Lynch 1967 : 56-57).The systematic exploitation of contiguous vertical resource zones established a number of local systems which differed from north to south and fromeast to west in accordance with regional environmental variations. The dis

tribution of deer and camelids, and varieties of wild plant resources, wereby no means uniform throughout these regions. There were, therefore, varyingdegrees of reliance on hunting in different locations and at different pointsin time. This means that various groups were consciously and unconsciouslyexperimenting with their resource configurations, resulting in a number ofinnovations. This in turn led to interactions between different verticallybased regions in the form of developing exchange networks (cf. McNeish et alfor a discussion of this phenomenon).In sum, the hunting of early post-Pleistocene herd animals made it possible for man to extend his occupation of the Andes by means of the moreefficient exploitation of animal resources. And as Andean conditions altered,th e hunting of migrating deer and camelids played an important role in orientingman's subsistence activities vertically, and in thus tying together the highestand the lowest life zones of the mountain environment in systematic patternsof exploitation. This pattern of vertical resource exploitation and horizontalregional exchange has remained the basis of Andean interactions to th e presentday despite the changes in resources and technology brought about by theshift from hunting and gathering to agriculture and herding.

The vertical environment during the pre-ceramic period was characterizedby two grasslandscapes, one at the bottom of the vertical series (the coastalsavannahs) and one at the top (the punas and paramos). Climatic changeseventually turned the coast into a desert broken only by river valley oasesand greatly reduced localized " lomas ". The grasslands at the top of th eAndes (although becoming progressively drier as one moves from central Peruthrough northern Bolivia) still remained grasslands and thus continued asthe habitats for herd animals. In considering Andean hunting it is thereforeuseful to view the Andes not from the coast upwards, but rather from the highaltitude grasslands downward.The highest habitable zone is characterized by high plateaus which runfrom north to south between the cordilleras. These plateaus are extensivein Bolivia and southern Peru, but become narrower in central Peru and finally

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10 SOCIT DES AMRICANISTESgive way to a more broken terrain in the northern Peruvian highlands. Thereis, therefore, a corridorlike effect at the top of the Andes for some 1,500 kilometers of its north-south extension.

Every vertical series of resource zones begins in the grasslands of these highaltitude plateaus and descends in transverse valleys to the coast or to thejungle. On the coast the valleys terminate in what became, through time,more and more isolated oases in the desert. And on the inland slope theyend in narrow gorges swallowed up by rugged terrain and dense rain forest.Each valley, therefore, is separated from the next by mountainous terrainin the middle elevations and is isolated from other valleys at its terminus.They al l join at their highest points however in the long corridors of grasslands at the top of the Andes. It is no wonder, then, that even today everyagricultural region entered on foot or horseback is entered from the puna.This is very important in understanding patterns of trade, and must havebeen a central factor in the geopolitics of pre-hispanic times. This patternis also important in understanding the transition from hunting to herdingthroughout the Andes.The Transition to Herding

The preconditions for domestication may have existed at different places,forming what would amount to different foci of potential herding communities.Such foci would be scattered from north to south at various points along thehigh altitude steppe landscape. Once domestication did take place at one ormore of these foci, the innovation spread, probably with great rapidity, alongthe horizontal puna corridor which linked different vertically ordered regionaleconomies, thus infusing a new element into these economies at the very topof their vertical series. Once established in the places most conducive toherding, the innovation then caught on in those high altitude regions (4,000meters and above) where it might possibly never otherwise have occurred.The same thing, in fact, might be said of high altitude quinoa and tuber cultivation, and perhaps of other innovations as well.It is impossible to know for sure juste how llama and alpaca herding developed from camelid hunting. There are two possibilities, however, which aresuggested by two basic hunting strategies found throughout the world. Oneof these involves the driving of herd animals into an enclosure of some kindwhere they are systematically slaughtered. The other consists of the stalkingand the ambush of wild game. Both of these methods have been observedin the hunting of camelids in native South America.Jane Wheeler Pires-Ferreira and her associates have hypothesized that theambush technique of hunting was the forerunner of Andean camelid herding.Their reasoning is based on the assumption that the ancestral species of modernllamas and alpacas exhibited a social pattern and a set of behavioral traitssimilar to those of contemporary guanacos and vicunas. Vicunas live in smallfamily groups within defined territories. Each group is dominated by a singlemale which defends his harem and his territory from intruding males. Thesegroups remain in the same place at all times of the year, year after year. Underproper geographic conditions, such as those prevailing on the Puna of Junin

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HUNTING TECHNOLOGIES IN ANDEAN CULTURE 11(where the authors' archaeological data were taken), and with low humanpressure on the wild herds, such numerically and spatially stable camelid populations would offer a highly predictable game supply to Andean hunters. Hunting echniques developing from this, goes the theory, would be that of theambush type rather than that of the surround type since the latter woulddestroy the stability of camelid territories.This specialized form of camelid hunting, and the hunters' primary dependence on it for subsistence, led to a sedentary human population. As longas a balance was maintained between the camelid and the human populations,say Pires-Ferreira et al, the system tended to remain the same. Howeveronce over-hunting and the presence of dogs had disrupted territorial stability,hereby dispersing the camelid herds, the emphasis began to shift awayfrom ambush hunting to strategies of increased control over the game territory in order to halt the dispersal, and thus to maintain the necessary man-animal balance. As this process progressed the camelids slowly began tochange in the direction of semi-domesticates through the decreased exchange ofgenes with wild herds. Eventually the relationship between these semidomes-ticated herds and the human population took on the configuration described byLeeds for the Chuckchee of Siberia and their semi-domesticated reindeer herds.Ultimately, however, human control of camelid territory expanded to th ehuman control of camelid breeding, thus giving rise to true domesticates and atrue herding technology.It is, however, only an assumption, not a proven fact that all camelid varieties uring the pre-ceramic period exhibited the same social patterns and th esame set of behavioral traits as those of contemporary vicunas. Since it isnot possible to identify camelid species on the basis of fragmentary osteolo-gical evidence alone, it is impossible for us to say whether the camelid populations of that period indeed constituted a uniform ancestral species of allexistant camelids, or whether speciation had begun before man took up ahunting way of life, and had thus already reached a point where ancestralllamas and alpacas were differentiated in their behavior and in their patternsof territoriality from those of modern vicunas. Such variation within th epre-ceramic population would naturally have shown a different response tothe environmental factor of hunting than that suggested by Pires-Ferreiraet al. If this kind of differentiation had indeed taken place before huntingbegan then a good case can be made for the drive and surround techniqueas th e way by which man began his path to camelid domestication and toherding as a way of life.This method of hunting has great antiquity in other parts of the world andhas been attested in the Andes from the sixteenth century to th e early decadesof the twentieth century. Cobo for example briefly describes a hunting technique observed by the Spaniards in the fifteen hundreds which was calledin Quechua cayeu. This term literally means " to enclose animals, or to placethem in corrals ". The caycu involved the construction of enclosures between hills and gorges in such a way as to catch deer and camelids as they ranthrough (Cobo 1956 : bk 14, ch. 16). In this respect George Miller (personalcommunication) reports finding an interesting crude stone construction of

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12 SOCIT DES AMRICANISTESunknown antiquity lying at an elevation of some 4,600 meters above sea levelin the punas above Mazocruz in the department of Puno, southern Peru. Thisstructure consists of two stone fences approximately 1.8 meters high and some100 meters long built in the shape of a closed funnel with an opening of about20 meters in width. The topography of the area is such that animals beingdriven over the hill would enter the opening and be trapped in the progressively onverging walls where they could be easily captured or killed. Accordingto local tradition this arrangement was formerly used for vicuna hunting inthe way Cobo describes for the sixteenth century caycu.It is extremely easy to contain camelids with the flimsiest of barriers. Infact, the favored technique used in historical times was not in the form offixed stone fences, but rather simple ropes strung around an area and hungwith streamers of cloth which would blow in the wind, thus discouraging theanimals from even approaching the barrier once inside the restricted area.Given the topography of the high altitude grasslands it is easy to imaginehow relatively large numbers of camelids could have been isolated from thegeneral population by the closing off, with the crudest materials, of relativelylarge areas. And if proto llamas-alpacas exhibited a different propensity todomestication than did the ancestors of modern vicunas and guanacos, thenit is easy to see how a relatively facile transition might have been made fromsurround hunting to the control of camelid territory, and eventually to thecontrol of camelid breeding.The period of transition from hunting to herding, however, was also a periodof transition from gathering to horticulture. In fact, it may even have beentrue that the domestication of animals suggested the domestication of highaltitude plants or vice versa. At any rate, due to regional variability andinterregional interaction, innovations were exchanged from place to placewhich ultimately added up to qualitative changes in Andean cultural patterns.We encounter during this period " mixed " economies where populationsrelied, in different degrees, on herding and hunting in the highest zones andhorticulture and gathering further down. There was a steady decrease in theimportance of hunting and gathering, until they were finally almost entirelysupplanted in most places by agriculture, herding and trade.

Hunting as a Marginal ActivityHunting, however, persisted in various forms playing subordinate roleswithin the broader cultural context as recently as the present century. Therewere three primary types of such marginal hunting in the Andes. They werecoastal hunting, organized Inca drives and residual puna hunting.There was hunting on both the north and the south coast of Peru duringthe Moche and the Nazca periods. Ceramics from the latter period in southernPeru suggest in their iconography that the spear and th e spear thrower and

perhaps the bolas and the sling were the weapons used. The game, althoughnot depicted on the vessels, was most likely guanaco since these animals arefound along the southern Peruvian coast even today. The Nazca data, how-

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HUNTING TECHNOLOGIES IN ANDEAN CULTURE 13ever, are much too sparse to allow us to say more about southern coastal huntingat this time.The pottery from the northern Peruvian coast, however, presents us witha more complete graphic record. Gerdt Kutscher's interpretation of Mocheiconography gives us a picture of deer hunting which, judging by the dressof the hunters, was reserved for the nobility. Weapons used were slings, lightjavelins and spear throwers (Kutscher 1967 : 118). It is entirely likely thatsuch hunting was indeed reserved for the upper classes of the agriculturallybases stratified societies of the coast as Kutscher has suggested. Iconographienterpretation alone, however, is not sufficient to establish the existenceof a pattern of purely sport hunting as posited by Kutscher. His hypothesiscould, however, be tested by an examination of middens from either Chanchanor from the Viru project to ascertain first the differences between the residence sites of the rich and the poor, and then the presence or absence of evidence for the unequal distribution of hunting between the two. If such adifferential distribution could be proven with data other than those from iconography, then it would be clear that hunting on the north coast had shiftedby Moche times from th e role of a primary economic activity to that of a sportwhich may well have been the prerogative of the elite, perhaps even a symbolof status, much as was the case in Europe during the same period.The exploitation of wild animals was a marginal activity during the Incaperiod ; however, it contrasted sharply with the apparent sport hunting ofMoche times. Judging from the sparse references in the chronicles thereseems to have been two types of hunting practised during Inca hegemony.The most spectacular of these was the great drive referred to as the royal hunt,and in Cobo and Balthasar Ramirez as the chaco. The most notable referencesto this are found in the writing of Cieza de Leon (1553), Balthasar Ramirez(1597), Cobo (1653) and Garcilaso de la Vega. These descriptions, says JohnRowe, are probably all based on reports of a single hunt held before 1536 byManco Inca near the Valley of Jauja in Central Peru in honor of FranciscoPizzaro(Rowe 1946 : 217).The " chaco " involved large numbers of beaters (10,000 to 20,000 accordingto Cobo, 50,000 to 100,000 according to Cieza de Leon), and a wide expanseof territory. Cobo estimates ten to twenty leagues or more, and BalthasarRamirez says that the area of the hunt depended on the number of beatersinvolved. The beaters made loud noises, thus forcing all wild life into anever constricting circle. This enormous human circle contracted to the point,writes Balthasar Ramirez, that the beaters could almost join hands. Slaughterers then went among the animals and killed them with clubs. Vicunas,guanacos, deer and even predators were taken in this fashion (Cieza de Leon1880 : ch. 16 ; Balthasar Ramirez 1597 : 18-19).Only a portion of the game animals rounded up in the drive were killed.These were males and older females. Reproducing females and the youngwere released. Cobo indicates that after shearing, vicunas were also released.All predators such as foxes and pumas were exterminated. Hunting of thistype was strictly regulated. Balthasar Ramirez reports that the " chaco "was a very serious affair (muy solemne) performed only at the arrival of a

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14 SOCIT DES AMRICANISTESviceroy or of other high personages, or at the behest of the priests or on otheroccasions ( otros respetos). The other chroniclers say the " chaco " wasregulated by the state and that the penalty for poaching was death. Theserestrictions, along with selective slaughtering, resulted in the profusion of animals in the game lands. Their numbers in some regions, however, appearto have diminished drastically when Inca (and local state) controls disappeared after the conquest (Jimenez de la Espada 1965 : vol. 2, p. 307).The second type of hunting reported in the colonial sources appears to havebeen on a much smaller scale. Gobo, for example, mentions the use of traps,lassos and " flches y otas armas arrojadizas " (probably including such thingsas spears, bows and arrows, slings and bolas), as well as the caycu which hasalready been discussed (Cobo 1956 : bk. 14, ch. 16).These data, as scanty as they are, nonetheless suggest an interpretation ofchanges in hunting in the Andes. In the case of the " chaco " what we seeis not hunting at all, but rather a planned management of a specific Andeanresource more like mining or forestry than anything else, where meat andwool were taken on a regulated periodic basis, employing not hunting skillsbut rather the organized labor of large numbers of unskilled workers. Furthermore,his resource was exploited in such a way as to assure large numbersof game in future years. This pattern of conservation and harvesting thereforemight not be too inappropriately labeled " Inca wilderness resource management ".The term Inca as used here, however refers to a period of Andean culturehistory, and not necessarily to the pan-Andean state itself which prevailedduring this time span. The picture we now have of the Andes under Incastate control, especially as depicted by John Murra (1975), is one of a mosaicof different state organizations which regulated the exchange of goods fromthe different vertical production zones within their jurisdictions. The Incassuperimposed a higher level of political and economic organization upon thesealready elaborate local systems, thus tying what were to become constituentAndean states into a broad pan-Andean empire. Judging by Balthasar Ramirez's description the " chaco " represented what was in fact a highly rationaluse of only one type of resource by local political and economic entities, a systematic use regulated by political, religious and other local social and culturalmechanisms. If this is the case, then what we see in relation to the Inca stateis simply the incorporation of one component of local planned, rational usesof vertically ordered resource configurations into a broader economic system,not the total Inca control claimed by most of the Spanish chroniclers. TheIncas, however, might well have expanded the " chaco " to other regions, asthey apparently did with llama herding and with corn and coca cultivation(Murra 1975). This interpretation, in fact, is consonant with what we knowof Inca controls in the areas of agriculture, herding and resource storage anddistribution, and thus represents yet another example of the highly efficientexploitation of Andean resources in Inca Peru. In sum, we see in the Inca" chaco " the change of a traditional Andean activity (hunting), as was thecase with so many other traditional Andean patterns of life, into a new system which operated on a higher level of elaboration and which formed an inte-

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HUNTING TECHNOLOGIES IN ANDEAN CULTURE 15grated component of Andean civilization at the zenith of its autonomous development.In contrast to the " chaco ", the " caycu " (as described by Cobo) representsnot the elaboration of Andean hunting, but rather its continuity from earliertimes. Such residual puna hunting probably existed side by side with herding,and perhaps also with agriculture in the lower elevation zones, as it did untilthe early decades of the present century. If the " caycu " in fact did formone component of local Inca economies, as was th e case with modern punapeasant economies, then it seems reasonable to assume that th e Inca statemerely incorporated it into the taxation system as was the normal practisewith herding and agricultural forms of production. If this is the case, thenwhat we see in residual puna hunting is a continuity extending backwardsin time from the twentieth century, through the Inca period to perhaps remotestantiquity.Residual puna hunting existed in central and southern Peru in the nineteenth century, and in southern Peru until the 1920s. The fullest descriptionwe have of this activity is the one given by the Swiss naturalist and PeruvianistJ. J. von Tschudi (1963). In the 1840s Tschudi accompanied a hunting partyfor five days in the Puna of Huanhuan in central Peru. These hunts began,he writes, in April or May when the horses were brought in from th e winter pastures. Each family from th e region supplied at least one man for the enterprise.Widows accompanied the hunters as cooks. The hunting party Tschudi observedconsisted of seventy to eighty or more Indians. The first step was to setup a corral in a flat area by placing poles in the ground twelve to fifteen stepsapart. At about two or two and a half feet above the ground a colored clothwas strung to the poles, and to this were affixed colored streamers which blewin the wind. An opening of a few hundred feet was left in th e fence as anentrance for the herds which were to be driven. The entire corral was completed in about half an hour. The men would then drive the vicunas sometimesfor miles towards the corral. Once the proper number of animals had entered,the entrance would be closed. The fleeing vicunas would run well inside thecorral, since the flying streamers attached to the fence would frighten them.The men would then kill them with their bolas.This weapon is described by Tschudi as three balls held together with athong made of th e achilles tendon of a vicuna. Two of the balls were heavy,the third light. The latter was held in the hunter's hand while the other twowere swung around his head. When let fly, the bolas would either wrapthemselves around the front legs or the neck of the animal bringing it downfor the kill. The range of this weapon was, according to Tschudi, fifteen totwenty paces.After this the corral was dismantled and moved to another location wherethe entire process would be repeated. Each drive yielded from fifty to sixtyvicunas, and often over one hundred animals would be taken. During thefive days Tschudi accompanied the hunting party, one hundred and twentytwo vicunas were bagged in this way. The meat was dried and distributedequally among the hunters. The hides were reserved for the church, eithergoing directly to the priest, or being sold to finance church repairs.

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16 SOCIT DES AMRICANISTESThis practise must have been wide spread since Tschudi cites an 1827 decreeissued by Simon Bolivar ordering that vicunas taken in this manner shouldnot be killed, but rather sheared and then set free. Tschudi, a naturalist,

saw no evidence during the time he spent in the sierra that such practises werediminishing the vicuna population, despite some contemporary reports tothe contrary. If this is true, then the pattern of residual hunting as practisedin the nineteenth century was one which balanced the take of the puna hunterswith the size of the vicuna population, thus indicating a possible long termcontinuity of the practise.The only reference found in the literature to such hunting for the twentiethcentury is in Western LaBarre's monograph on the Peruvian Aymara. LaBarresays that such hunting was taking place in the Aymara region as late as 1927(LaBarre 1948 : 77). Further to the north, in the Quechua-speaking department f Cuzco and the northern provinces of the department of Arequipa,there is an extensive area of high puna which provides the ideal habitat forvicuna. A long time resident of that region, Sr. Jose Santos Vizcarra, toldthis author in 1975 of a hunt he had observed in the early 1920s near CerroYayculla in the remote punas of the province of Castilla, Arequipa. His reporttallies with that of Tschudi's which was made some hundreds of kilometersto the north and well over a century before. The account given by Sr. Vizcarraof southern Peruvian hunting thus deserves to be written into the record asa useful piece of ethnographic information.Sr. Vizcarra recalls that a large area of the puna was fenced off for the huntby stringing a rope on poles about a meter above the ground in an enormouscircle. The poles, he estimates, were about three meters apart. Cloth streamers of different colors were affixed to the rope, at about three centimetersapart. These streamers fluttered in th e wind causing a flamelike effect. Theirname, lliplli, in fact, is derived from the Quechua term llipiy meaning " toflame or to have a luster like that of a flame ". Dogs were used to chase thevicunas into the circle. Once inside, the animals ran well away from th e fencessince the flapping lliplli frightened them. The pursuing dogs caused themto bunch up and run in circles until they were exhausted. The men wouldthen catch them with lassos and kill them, or would kill them with bolas. Otherexits were left in th e fence with traps set to snare the fleeing vicunas. Thesetraps were in the form of netting. The animals' feet would become entangledthus allowing the hunters to close in for th e kill.There was only one hunt a year. The hunters dried the meat and tookthe wool either for direct use or for trading or selling elsewhere. These hunterswere primarily llama and alpaca herders who owned no agricultural land.Each year they sold wool and meat at a market place, and with the cash wouldpurchase salt directly from a distant mine. With this salt, and with driedmeat, live animals, wool and woolen products, they would travel down to th ewarm valleys to barter for corn, potatoes, wheat, barley and fruit (see Custred1974). Hunting, therefore, provided only a secondary means of productionwhich furnished the herder-trader either with raw products for trading, orsupplied him with directly consumable items, thus allowing him to avoidcutting into his primary capital, namely his llama and alpaca herds. When

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HUNTING TECHNOLOGIES IN ANDEAN CULTURE 17hunting disappeared with the vicunas, the herding-trading pattern continuedas it did in other puna regions where hunting was not practiced.Religious-magical rituals were performed before vicuna hunts as beforeany other subsistence activity, including interzonal trading. This consistedof the burning of an offering called variously alcanzo, werachurana, and wera-kanana (known elsewhere as despacho and pago). This offering included llamaor alpaca fat, kernels of corn, leaves and seeds of coca, pieces of soapstoneand incense. Libations were also poured, and a special vicuna song was sung.Wild animals, including the vicuna, were said to be th e livestock (uywaq) ofthe hill spirits.The singing of songs for domesticated animals and the offering of alcanzosis still a feature of the annual offerings made to th e hills on behalf of domesticated animals. The llama and alpaca offering is made in February, thetime of the birth and mating of these animals. The llama-alpaca song, thepaquwaynu, is sung at that time. Sheep have their special day and offeringon St . John's Day, June 24th, at which time th e sheep song is sung. Offeringsare burned on the day of St . James in July for the horse, occasioning the singingof the horse song, and the cow song is sung when making offerings to the hillsin behalf of cattle in the month of August. The vicuna song, sung in connectionith offerings to the hills each year before the hunt, thus completes a ritualpattern centered on the principal resources of puna dwellers.The sexual division of labor seen in puna hunting and herding is reflectedin this symbolic complex. Men hunt and trade, and when at home pasturethe animals, while women stay home year round tending the herds. Theherd animals, with the exception of the horse, are all symbolized by a motherimage. Alpacas, therefore, are represented in song and ritual as paqumama,sheep as cKapimama and cattle as anumama. Furthermore, only womenare permitted to sing the domesticated animal songs, and humans appearingin the texts of these songs are always female. The vicuna, on the other hand,is called taytay, " father ", and only men sing th e vicuna song.It is also interesting to note that the melody of the cow song is typicallyIndian, while the melody of the vicuna song is European. One would expectthe reverse to be true since the vicuna is a native Andean animal, while thecow is not. In fact the provenience of cattle is recognized within the cowsong itself when the cow sings " hispaamanta lloqsimurqani, pobre peruanatauywasaq nispa " (" I have come from Spain saying 'I will nourish the poorPeruvian women' ").

Traps, known as payche, are said to still be used by the herders of the punas ofthe province of Castilla. These traps are laid on game trails for deer and are covered with grass to disguise them. When the animal is caught the hunters sweepdown upon him for the kill. Traps, probably of the snare type and calledtoqlla, are still used in that province to catch vizcacha and kipio, an ediblepuna bird. One informant said that a few people in the herding anexo ofHuaraco-Palca sell the meat of wild animals at the mines, thereby derivingeven today part of their income from hunting and trapping.This paper has attempted to draw attention to th e importance of huntingin man's adaptation to the Andean environment, and to indicate in general

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18 SOCIT DES AMRICANISTESterms the role of hunting in, and its changing relationship to, Andean culturaldevelopment. In respect to th e environment this paper has suggested thatwe think of the Andes as a series of integrated vertical zones which shouldbe viewed not from the coast upwards, but rather from the highest altitude lifezones downward. This perspective is not only useful in understanding th e roleof hunting in Andean culture history, but also in understanding all other formsof production and exchange activities as they relate to the Andean environment.What is needed, however, are not generalities but rather specific detailson hunting as a food producing technology. Hunting is highly mutable andcan develop into highly specialized activities. The question is what kindsof hunting strategies were developed in different Andean regions and how didthese specializations facilitate environmental adaptations and cultural elaborations ? Those questions may be answered to some extent by closer attention o hunting as a technology when examining the archaeological data, andby interviews with herders in the remote Punas of southern Peru who mighthave participated or witnessed vicuna hunts which marked the end of a longhistory of group hunting in the Central Andes.

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