Ernst Halbmayer

This project aims to analyze the ethnographic and historic evidence of the variously transformed indigenous Chibchan, Cariban and Arawakan groups in north-western South America. In contrast to the recent anthropological focus on Arawakan and Carib-speakers, Chibcha groups, as an important link between Central and South America, as well as between the Andes, Amazonia and Mesoamerica have not yet been theorized and analyzed in terms of current anthropological debates. My current research focus aims to fill that gap and the here proposed project will contribute to this goal by focusing on the broader region of north-western Venezuela and north-eastern Colombia. It is a region of extreme ecological differences as well as of marked socio-cultural and linguistic diversity that to date is still difficult to define in more general terms.

The aim of the current research is to identify the specifics of the indigenous socio-cosmological logics in this heterogeneous area by applying three central strategies: (i) Conducting a comparison of the historical and contemporary ethnographic information of the mentioned southern Chibcha-speaking groups (ii) examining the forms and dimensions of the ‚Chibchaization‘ of contemporary Carib and Arawak populations in the region and (iii) establishing the basis for a future Pan-Chibcha comparison.

The main methods applied are case reconstructive and comparative analyses of ethnographic information from historical sources, ethnohistorical and ethnographic studies, as well as own field research among the Yukpa. The comparative analysis is aiming to identify the empirical variations and organizing principles of Chibchan socio-cosmologies in terms of kinship and social organization, the principles of spatial organization of house and territory, the forms of shamanism/priesthood, notions of death and burial rituals, and human-animal relations. It is assumed that local Arawakan and Carib groups adapted to and became transformed by the existing regional cultural Chibcha environment.

Comparative research on the Chibcha groups will fill the existing gap in understanding Chibchan socio-cosmological principles in relation to the already developed set of knowledge for Amazonia, the Andes and Mesoamerica. It will develop theories on the historical colonial and actual global transformations and the processes of ethnogenesis of contemporary Chibcha groups. It will provide much needed anthropological data to engage in intense interdisciplinary exchange with linguistics, archeology, history, globalization theory and even physical anthropology and genetic studies to develop a fuller understanding of this core region both in terms of culture history and human development in the Americas as well as in terms of the entangled and uneven processes of globalization and contemporary indigenous modernities.