Symposium
THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF ‘EMPTY SPACES’: AN INTERNODAL APPROACH TO INTERSOCIETAL RELATIONSHIPS

Coordinators
José Berenguer
Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino
 Gonzalo Pimentel
Pontificia Universidad Católica del Norte

Commentators
Tom Dillehay
Vanderbilt University / Universidad Austral de Chile
José Luis Martínez
Universidad de Chile

There has been a growing interest recently among archeologists who study intersocietal interaction (sensu Schortman & Urban 1992 a and b) to investigate the so-called “empty spaces”. These spaces are the areas located between the large populated centers. They are extensive zones that can sometimes cover entire regions and that are peripheral to the main settlement nodes (Upham 1992). There are many of these intermediate areas in arid or semiarid territories in different parts of the world, such as certain areas in Africa, in the Himalayas of Nepal or in the southeastern U.S., where well-defined, populated centers are separated by vast stretches of open territory  (Schlegel 1992).

Justification and general relevance
Despite their great size and that for this reason many regional and panregional interactions take place here, “empty spaces” have been usually overlooked by standard archeological research. The nodal approach that has prevailed until now in archaeology has tended to ignore these big geographic sections, assuming that they are “vacant” spaces and, therefore, irrelevant or, at least, of marginal or secondary interest. The problem is that these spaces are never that empty. It’s true that they are often scattered and scantily populated areas, but rarely are they demographically empty, so that instead of “empty spaces”, one of us has proposed calling them “internodal spaces”  (Berenguer 2002).

The virtual exclusion of internodal spaces as objects of investigation has led to noticeably biased pre-histories in favor of large sites, with conspicuous archeological remains and patterns that are considered “dominant” in a region (Upham 1992). Such biases influence our perception of the cultural development of a specific area, assimilating the cultural history of  the internodal population segments into the large population centers and leaving them without their own history.

The internodal spaces are far from being irrelevant. There is considerable evidence that these spaces create an important dynamic in regional and panregional systems, and that they are essential for the development of large scale interactive networks (Upham 1992). Beyond their obvious role in interregional connectivity, the specific features of these territories seem to gravitate in different ways around large populated centers, influencing not only the costs of procuring and transporting goods, but also the relative importance of the nodes in their respective regions.  The hypothesis could be made that the internodal spaces are, in themselves, a critical resource for the interacting societies. So that the emergence, growth and decline of a network’s nodes could depend greatly on the specific qualities of these territories, on their distribution across the larger geographic space and on their changing availability for the movement of people and the circulation of goods in different historical periods  (Berenguer 2002).

Although the initial archeological “view” of spaces during the ‘90s was mostly an economic one – based on the development of the so-called New Geography of the 1950s and 1960s (Localization Theory and Central Place models), as well as the models of World Systems, Borders and Frontiers and Center-Periphery Archaeology of the ‘70s and ‘80s – we categorically state that there is no practical or theoretical reason to exclude the analysis of social, political, technological, ritual or symbolic aspects.  

Relevance of the Andes
Due to the extreme limitation, discontinuity and dispersion of its focal living areas, the Andean Area has many internodal spaces, which have frequently been ignored or overlooked by Andean archaeology. The most paradigmatic case is, perhaps, that of the archaeological investigation of verticality and its archipelago variant. The archaeologists who have investigated the subject have concentrated on the nucleus and its colonies, avoiding the middle or intermediate spaces.  Something similar can be said for the transhumance studies of hunters-gatherers from the Archaic Period, where there has been an emphasis on investigating and documenting the internal circuits to the groups, but little effort has been made to do the same for the extensive areas of open territory that separate these settlement systems  from other distant systems.

It appears that after the significant progress made 40 years ago of moving from the study of sites to the study of regions, we archaeologists have stopped at “the region” as a scale of analysis. Or stated another way: it would seem that we have not noticed the importance of expanding this scale to contrast – in the spaces between nodes – our hypotheses about the “vertical control of various ecological floors”, “transhumance circuits in the coastal-altiplano profile”, “traffic vectors” or interregional “bands of interaction”.

However, there are several lines of investigation, new technical developments, recent environmental policies and certain theoretical approaches that have recently been influencing the expansion of the scale of archaeological analysis from the regional to the panregional. The studies of  pre-Hispanic roads, for example, have brought archaeologists far from the main population centers, even from the hinterland of a specific settlement system, to plunge them fully into the internodal spaces: consider the case of the “elongated spaces” of the Revolving Mobility model (Núñez & Dillehay 1979) or the caravan spatiality revealed by the ethno archaeology of the llama carrier traffic circuits (Nielsen 1997). GIS’, satellite images, 3D digital cartography and other technologies related to these developments, have not only put these extensive territories under the noses of archaeologists; they have also tracked them from the air as never before, generating predictive models of occupation, mobility and utilization, and verifying these hypotheses with greater precision in the field.  Meanwhile the installation of water and gas pipelines and electricity cables, as well as the construction of new highways have put the EIA on the front line as providers of information about these interstitial spaces, including a great deal of evidence about small and isolated sites, usually not considered by the nodal approach of those archaeologists engaged in scientific research. The different springs of landscape archaeology and above all, the reinsertion of space as a key element of social theory (since it “makes a difference” when explaining societies), has led to the need to increase the scale of archaeological analysis, since the social construction of space is not a process that only occurs in the nodes and their hinterlands, but also in geographic territory and often at the level of megasystems of interaction. 

We think that the study of internodal spaces, therefore, is a very important emerging topic, that should become a focus around which a transdisciplinary research program can be built that complements the traditional nodal approach, to help reconfigure regional and interregional pre-histories, histories and ethnographies. 

Objective and thematic central points
This Symposium proposes to explore and discuss – from a multidisciplinary perspective and using different theoretical focuses or paradigmatic options – the role of the internodal spaces in intersocietal relationships.

We expect contributions from a wide range of disciplines and interdisciplinary approaches, including archaeology, ethnoarchaeology, archaeobotany, zooarchaeology, ethnography, cultural anthropology, ethnohistory and human geography. 

Some of the Symposium topics are:   

• Studies of networks (caravan routes, Inka routes, cultural contact situations)
• Intersocietal interaction seen from internodal spaces
• Settlement and subsistence in internodality situations
• Production, transport and circulation of goods
• Patterns of development in internodal spaces
• Towns, villages and location “positioning” processes
• Control, power, negotiation and conflict
• Symbolism and ritual between nodes (rock art, offerings, ceremonial structures, markers)
• Methodological questions in an internodal approach (concepts, survey tactics, information recording devices, types of collection, gathering and excavation strategies, sampling forms, applications of quantitative and qualitative techniques, GIS-based modeling, etc.)
• Internodal spaces and individuals in ethnohistorical documents
• Inclusive and exclusive  views of the internodal landscapes
• The contributions of nineteenth century travelers
• Ethnogrpahy of internodal individuals, families, groups and communities
• Funeral rites and bioanthropology between nodes
• The topic of identities in internodal spaces
• Potential of the internodal approach in wooded areas, along the coast or in the subtropical Andean mountain range

We suggest that those interested in participating may wish to consult the bibliography below in order to adjust their presentations to the Symposium’s requirements. 

References

Berenguer, J., 2002. Tráfico de caravanas, interacción interregional y cambio cultural en la prehistoria tardía del desierto de Atacama. PhD Dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Nielsen, A., 1997. El tráfico caravanero visto desde La Jara. Estudios Atacameños 14: 339-371, San Pedro de Atacama.

Núñez,  L. & T. D. Dillehay, 1979. Movilidad giratoria, armonía social y desarrollo en los Andes Meridionales: Patrones de tráfico e interacción económica (Ensayo). Antofagasta: Universidad del   Norte.

Schlegel, A., 1992. African political models in the American Southwest Hopi as an internal frontier society. American Anthropologist 94 (2): 376-397.

Schortman, E. M. & P. A. Urban, 1992a. The place of interaction studies in archaeological thought. In: Resources, power, and interregional interaction, E. M. Schortman & P. A. Urban, Eds.,  pp. 3-15. New York: Plenum Press.
----1992b. Current trends in interaction research. In: Resources, power, and interregional interaction, E. M. Schortman & P. A. Urban, Eds.,  pp. 235-255. New York: Plenum Press.

Upham,  S., 1992. Interaction and isolation: The empty spaces in panregional political and economic systems. In: Resources, power, and interregional interaction, E. M. Schortman & P. A. Urban, Eds.,  pp.  139-152. New York: Plenum Press.