Transcultural knowledge production in the southern Andes region. Spatiality, materiality and the construction of sacred topographies in the context of colonial rule. Sajama and Sabaya, 16th-19th centuries.

• Applicant: Dr. Astrid Windus
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: since 2020
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 433073944

The research project contributes to the transcultural history of knowledge. It examines the dynamics of local knowledge production in the context of Christianization and colonial rule in the Andean highland province of Caranga between the 16th and 19th centuries. It is explicitly concerned with transcultural forms of religious and cosmological knowledge, which is always spatially and geographically located throughout the Andean region (Windus 2022) and inseparably linked to the local construction of sacred spaces and topographies. The project investigates this connection by means of a micro-historical study of the villages of Sajama and Sabaya in the Bolivian highlands (Department of Oruro, Carangas Province). The phenomenon is first addressed in general terms by developing a theoretical model for analyzing sacred spatiality. In the second step, this model serves as an instrument for the micro-historical investigation of the two case studies. Here, the meaningful interaction between the local actors, the surrounding sacralized topography and the artefacts and architectures (e.g. burial towers/chullpas, places of worship/wak'a, churches, chapels, etc.), which are part of the social and religious space, will be examined. As "epistemic objects" (Gleiter, Schwarte 2015), they were involved in the production, preservation and (re)configuration of religious and cosmological knowledge. The sources, consisting of written and non-written material traditions as well as ethnographic interviews, are recorded using a geographical information system (GIS), brought together and placed in relation to the geographical space in which they were found or articulated (georeferencing). The aim is to visualize historical "topographies" of religious and cosmological knowledge in the form of a dynamic, web-based map. It is intended to make visible the transcultural dimensions of knowledge production and circulation as well as the interpretation of local epistemologies and their interconnections with hegemonic orders of knowledge.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• International Connection: Chile
• Cooperation Partners: Professor Fernando Guzmán Schiappacasse, Ph.D.; Professor José Luís Martínez Cereceda, Ph.D.