ABSTRACT
This chapter considers Andean ways of interacting with material things—stonework, weaving, pottery, food making, metalwork—as processes directed towards making “living beings” that grow together mutually. In practice-based learning processes, children learn about this living nature of material things, as they make miniature pots and small weavings. By “following the materials” (sensu Ingold), in similar praxis-based approaches, archaeologists now suggest that ancient pottery from the Peruvian North coast (Moche) and Northwest Argentina is not matter solidified, but an expression of fluid social, political, and cosmic relations. And in Chavín stonework, they perceive material form fluid with images that inspired visiting pilgrims to perceive human–animal and plant relations from a shamanic perspective. This recent academic rethinking of material culture abandons former epistemological approaches for ontological ones, in which a return to animism, and sensitivity to perspectivist viewpoints and transformational experiences are proving more useful.
