Writing History into the Landscape: Space, Myth, and Ritual in Contemporary Amazonia

Like members of most nonliterate societies, the Yanesha preserve historical memory through narrative and performative practices such as myths, traditions, reminiscences, rituals, and body practices. Among the Yanesha, however, these coalesce into a major inscribing practice, that of "writing" history into the landscape. I contend that "topographic writing" constitutes a protowriting system based on "topograms"—individual elements of the landscape imbued with historical significance through myth and ritual. When combined in sequential or nonsequential ways, these elements behave as "topographs" (units of a longer narrative). Through this mnemonic device the Yanesha have preserved not only the memory of the mythical consecration of their traditional territory, but also that of its despoliation and desecration in more recent times, [history, myth, ritual, landscape, memory, protowriting systems, Amazonia]