The Mountain Embodied

Matthew C. Velasco is an assistant professor of anthropology and codirector of the Human and Animal Bone Laboratory at Cornell University.

A Note on Images List of Illustrations List of Tables Introduction. Of Heads and Mountains 1. The Specter of Ethnicity 2. The Substance of Personhood 3. Emergence and Entombment 4. Embodiment and Life Course 5. Becoming the Mountain Acknowledgments Notes Bibliography Index

"Rather than simply reducing head shaping to a typological category or effect of ethnicity, The Mountain Embodied contemplates this bodily practice's connection to social processes, landscapes, political powers, and sacred worldviews. This is an extensively researched and highly interesting read. While Velasco focuses on the prehispanic Colca Valley of PerU, his bioarchaeological case study provides an instructive model for the investigation of communities from other cultures and historic periods." - Pamela L. Geller, University of Miami, author of Theorizing Bioarcheology "Velasco weaves together an astonishing range of evidentiary threads from the bodies and tombs of the late pre-Columbian Colca Valley, interpreting them through an Andean ontology of personhood and groups. His study complicates the truism that Andean cranial modification was an ethnic marker, showing how multilayered social identities were formed over time through the intentional shaping of children's heads, diverse experiences of feeding, violence and movement, and the postmortem care of the dead body. This groundbreaking, beautifully written book sets a high bar for what bioarchaeology can be." - Elizabeth N. Arkush, University of Pittsburgh, author of War, Spectacle, and Politics in the Ancient Andes