Paper short abstract:

This presentation will address Platt’s work on the Indian experience of the 19th century and the threads and traces of past actions that can be found there. I will focus on religious symbols, festivals and calendars and their control by the Catholic church.

Paper long abstract:

One of the enduring motifs in Tristan Platt's work is that of merging horizons, and by implication their splitting apart. To see in an event (e.g. tribute payment) or process (e.g. gestation and childbirth) a combining and recombining of various historical threads requires a particular kind of intellectual approach; one which avoids an over-theorized conceptual structure and is sensitive to the undercurrents of surface of phenomena. This presentation will address Platt's work on the Indian experience of the 19th century and the threads and traces of past actions that can be found there. In particular I seek to build bridges between the eastern Amazon and southern Andes through an examination of religious symbols, festivals and calendars and their control by the Catholic church.