Reticent pots, preoccupied people: coping with ontological ambiguity in first millennium AD northwest Argentina

ALBERTI, BENJAMIN; LAGUENS, ANDRES

Honolulu

Congreso; 78TH ANNUALMEETING SOCIEYT FOR AMERICAN ARCHEOLOGY; 2013

Society for American Archaeology

?The exchange model of action supposes that the other of the subject is another subject, not an object; and this, of course, is what perspectivism is all about? (Marilyn Strathern, 1992, Writing Societies, Writing Persons). An opening premise of this paper is that pots can be subjectivized. Anthropomorphic pots and bodily practices at sites in the Ambato Valley and among the La Candelaria of Salta and Tucuman provinces in northwest Argentina during the first millennium AD point towards ontological equivalence in relations among bodies, pots and persons. Amazonian perspectivism suggests that ontological predation?the utter annihilation of an Other through changed perspective?is one dominant mode of relation which requires maximal subjectivization of the Other. In the specific cases discussed here, two regimes of ?potly subjectification? are argued for?one evidenced through daily practices of food preparation; the other through corporeal play and the making of pots as bodies. There was an inherent danger in establishing such relations. As such, both modes are characterized by fear and care?fear of the potential predatory relations established through repeated exchanges, and care that those relations are managed appropriately. Hence, the cases of ?reticent? pots?deliberately only partially subjectivized?and disarticulated human bodies.