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Accepted Paper:

Is the past another time? Ancient objects in Tsachila cosmology  
Montserrat Ventura Oller (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona)

Paper short abstract:

Taking into account how Tsachila people from the western lowlands of Ecuador conceptualize the past, this paper will discuss the place of ancient objects for the Tsachila in the light of their cosmology.

Paper long abstract:

As other Amerindian languages, Tsafiki does not express the ancient past as a lived time for present speakers. There was, of course, another time, which some other people, so-called Tsachila, experienced and narrated to other people by means of what anthropologists nowadays call mythical tales. Tsachila do frequently find objects which archaeologists would describe as pre-Columbian pottery, but in fact they are physical evidences of this other time, when the 'rainbow-penis of suyun' broke in thousands of pieces and fell on Tsachila territory. Only shamans are able to take them and to work on them in order to avoid their dangerous influence on living people and, eventually, to appease them to make them helpful for curing rituals. This paper will discuss the place of these ancient objects for latter-day Tsachila (Western Ecuadorian lowlands) in the light of their cosmology.

Panel P14
Exploring the dangers and virtues of ancient things
  Session 1