Paper short abstract

The present paper seeks to show how the potential links between myth, as a body of ethnographic data and as an object of analysis, can be brought into alignment with archaeological materials in the elucidation of the past of Peruvian Amazonia.

Paper long abstract

The present paper seeks to show how the potential links between myth, as a body of ethnographic data and as an object of analysis, can be brought into alignment with archaeological materials in the elucidation of the past of Peruvian Amazonia. I look at a curious feature of a set of myths about a kind of wild pig, and suggest that this feature once had a material referent, namely, cities. These cities have disappeared, but have left their imprint on the mythic system.