University of Nottingham
  

A transforming landscape of journeys: An ethnohistorical reconstruction of southwestern Amazonia in the nineteenth century

Project outline

Popular and scientific images of indigenous Amazonian people stress attachment to specific places and landscapes - partly thanks to decades of activism over indigenous land rights. Stress on settlement however has tended to obscure the meaning that movement holds for such peoples. Studying the long distance trading expeditions of the Piro people, this project sought to balance such images. 

Abandoned by 1912, Piro canoe journeys were instrumental to moving resources around a vast region. They were also central to outsiders entering the region, such that many modern landscape features, such as the position of towns, national parks, and political frontiers continue to show the marks of Piro people's journeying.

Piro people from the Urubamba river far to the east on the Purús, 1906  Photograph of Piro people from the Urubamba river, 1906 
 
 

Achievements

The phenomenological approach adopted was very successful and led into a detailed analysis of the canoe, the major means of transport. The remarkable complexity of the Piro canoe as a social object embedded in social relations became apparent. The canoe emerged as a mobile version of domestic/village spatial social relations but with a key inversion. While the village is dominated by the ideal stasis of old people/women, the canoe is dominated by the hyper-mobility of young men.

Archival research revealed that the Piro people did not simply stop trading around 1912 but instead that in Piro eyes, white people had progressively taken over the 'ownership' of journeys, meaning that 'trading' became 'crewing for white people'. The canoe also shifted from being the means of trade to the actual site of trade.

Canoes have, to date been treated as marginal in the ethnographic literature on Amazonia, but this research project has proved their centrality to culture in the region. The research has thrown up exciting new avenues for research into the symbolic anthropology of transport, technology, material culture and kinship.

Ongoing influence

A travel book on the topic is planned and will disseminate the research findings to a wider audience. Peter Gow is also putting the key techniques from the project into new research on the social history of Highland Perthshire in Scotland in the nineteenth century.

Award details

Duration: 2006-2007 (9 months)

Principal Investigator:
Professor Peter Gow

Higher Education Institution:
Philosophy, Anthropology and Film Studies, University of St Andrews

Selected publications

Gow, P. G. (2012) The Piro Canoe: A Preliminary Ethnographic Account, Journal de la Société des Américanistes. 98 (1):39-61 

 

 

 

 

 
 

Landscape and Environment Programme

School of Geography
University Park
University of Nottingham
Nottingham, NG7 2RD

telephone: +44 (0) 115 84 66071
email: landscape@nottingham.ac.uk