One of the most significant differences between the New World's major
areas of high culture is that Mesoamerica had no beasts of burden and
wool, while the Andes had both. Four members of the camelid family--wild
guanacos and vicunas, and domestic llamas and alpacas--were native to
the Andes. South American peoples relied on these animals for meat and
wool, and as beasts of burden to transport goods all over the Andes. In
this book, Duccio Bonavia tackles major questions about these camelids,
from their domestication to their distribution at the time of the
Spanish conquest. One of Bonavia's hypotheses is that the arrival of the
Europeans and their introduced Old World animals forced the Andean
camelids away from the Pacific coast, creating the (mistaken) impression
that camelids were exclusively high-altitude animals. Bonavia also
addresses the diseases of camelids and their population density,
suggesting that the original camelid populations suffered from a
different type of mange than that introduced by the Europeans. This new
mange, he believes, was one of the causes behind the great morbidity of
camelids in Colonial times. In terms of domestication, while Bonavia
believes that the major centers must have been the puna zone
intermediate zones, he adds that the process should not be seen as
restricted to a single environmental zone. Bonavia's landmark study of
the South American camelids is now available for the first time in
English. This new edition features an updated analysis and comprehensive
bibliography. In the Spanish edition of this book, Bonavia lamented the
fact that the zooarchaeological data from R. S. MacNeish's Ayacucho
Project had yet to be published. In response, the Ayacucho's Project's
faunal analysts, Elizabeth S. Wing and Kent V. Flannery, have added
appendices on the Ayacucho results to this English edition. This book
will be of broad interest to archaeologists, zoologists, social
anthropologists, ethnohistorians, and a wide range of students.
