| Recent attempts to discover meaning in the archaeological record have defined that meaning in social rather than cultural terms. This dissertation seeks cultural meaning by applying the concept of technological style to archaeological data from Cerro Huaringa (A.D. 1100-1535), the first pre-European smelting site to be discovered in the New World. First, the anthropological investigation of technology is reviewed and the current state of knowledge about Andean metallurgy is outlined. Next, the discovery and excavation of the Cerro Huaringa arsenical copper smelting industry are recounted. Then the techniques used in that industry are reconstructed, revealing a smelting process that relied on human lung power instead of mechanical bellows to provide draft to the furnaces. This reliance limited the temperatures attainable, thus preventing a thorough melting of the furnace contents and making impossible a complete separation of the smelted copper metal from its slag byproduct. Large grindstones called batanes were used to crush the slag, freeing small prills of copper to be gleaned by hand. This laborious process did not change significantly for at least 600 years. An explanation for this persistant commitment to lung-powered draft can be found in the role of breath in the Andean worldview. Ethnohistorical, ethnographic, and linguistic evidence suggest that breath was believed to play a vital, transformational role in the circulation of the supernatural life force which suffuses the Andean cosmos. Technological consequences of this cultural choice include the perpetuation of smelting as an unsophisticated task suitable for unskilled, low status laborers, the preclusion of the discovery of metallic iron, and the rapid, complete replacement of Andean smelting practices with those of the Spanish. |
