Formal Structural Analysis of Andean Art and Investigation into its Meaning

FAIN: RO-10625-70

Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois (Champaign, IL 61801-3620)
R. Tom Zuidema (Project Director: September 1970 to present)

To establish critical method of interpreting the non-material aspects of pre-Spanish Andean culture. ABSTRACT: Project to establish a critical method for interpreting the non-material aspects of pre-Spanish Andean culture. PI will study early colonial Spanish chronicles on the Andean culture and early colonial indigenous art as well as making an iconographic analysis of the great styles of Andean art prior to that of the Inca. Study will be an application of sociological and cosmological models to the interpretation of ancient iconography. By studying 1) the Inca social structure at the time of the Spanish conquest, 2) the art of the Incas and their colonial descendents in its cultural context, 3) other Peruvian art, PI hopes to establish their interrelationship indicating the continuity of an Andean theory of structure. Project represents one approach to interpreation of ancient Andean art, the only remaining clue to the thought of a non-literate great and vanished culture. Documentation of project--photographs, slides, drawings--will be deposited at U. of Illinois Dept. of Anthropology. Funds for PI's summer salary, travel to Peru and Europe (to study colelctions there), assistant-draughtsman, photographic and reproduction expenses, indirect costs.