Abstract
This chapter takes a critical look at the concept of power, by exploring the role of ritual and knowledge as a basis for leadership, and by identifying place as an additional material signature of authority. I have reviewed the historic, linguistic, and archeological information that suggests how leaders in Muisca societies may have used rituals of place-making as a source of political authority. I have also explored how this kind of activity may be linked to a general material pattern: the appearance of new architectural forms and successive construction sequences in the same location. Additional comparative research could clarify whether the presence of repeated episodes of place-making activities reflected political arguments of emerging elites in chiefdom societies that sought to link their authority to preexisting cultural knowledge.
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Acknowledgments
I am grateful to the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá for supporting archaeological field research undertaken in Suta in 2007 and 2009 through two grants, Convocatoria Nacional de Investigación 2007, modalidad 4 (#6074) with Sebastián Fajardo and modalidad 6 (#5866). Students from my undergraduate course at the Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Poder y Resistencia en Sociedades Cacicales, also provided assistance with fieldwork in April 2007. Archaeological fieldwork in 2001 was supported by National Science Foundation International Post-Doctoral Fellowship (INT–0107380). The master’s thesis of Sebastián Fajardo (2009), Procesos de centralización política de una comunidad cacical en el Valle de Leiva: jerarquía y negociación entre los siglos XI y XVII, also contributed to the research presented here. Earlier drafts on this manuscript have been read and commented on by a variety of investigators and I especially want to thank Robert Drennan, Joyce Marcus, Víctor González, and Andrea Cuellar for their thoughtful criticism and editorial assistance. Finally, I want to thank my colleagues in the Department of Anthropology at the Universidad Nacional, Bogotá who have helped to create the academic spaces which have stimulated and supported this research. I am particularly grateful to Ana Maria Groot de Mahecha, Ximena Pachón, Roberto Pineda and Andrés Salcedo for their administrative help in coordinating the archaeological component of the masters program in Anthropology.
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Henderson, H. (2014). The Role of Place-Making in Chiefdom Societies. In: Gnecco, C., Langebaek, C. (eds) Against Typological Tyranny in Archaeology. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-8724-1_11
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