Monuments, Empires, and Resistance: The Araucanian Polity and Ritual Narratives

Cambridge Studies in Archaeology

by Tom D. Dillehay

From AD 1550 to 1850, the Araucanian polity in southern Chile was a center of political resistance to the intruding Spanish empire. In this book, Tom D. Dillehay examines the resistance strategies of the Araucanians and how they used mound building and other sacred monuments to reorganize their political and culture life in order to unite against the Spanish. Drawing on anthropological research conducted over three decades, Dillehay focuses on the development of leadership, shamanism, ritual, and power relations.

Genres: History

506 pages, Hardcover

First published April 2, 2007

About the author

Tom D. Dillehay is Professor of Anthropology at Vanderbilt University.

Reviews

[Ring Chime · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book like a lot of academic texts has the somewhat bad habit of frequently repeating statements already made and understood, and arguably could have been shorter or better organized in a number of ways and fashions. There's also an argument to be made that the monograph is not the ideal form for certain kinds of information like the movements of rituals to be conveyed, even with some grainy images attached or enclosed in that monograph. I don't really understand why the text had to be as long as it was. I don't usually like details about battles and conflict, but considering how important military success was to being buried within a particular mound or associated with one, it feels like it might have been a good idea to cover more of the narratives of this kind that probably were present in the main text? I felt like I met with all kinds of interesting details interspersed between increasingly repetitions of the same facets or pieces of information that were dulling owing to their being repeated so many times.