Today that situation is changing dramatically. Only a few years ago there would have been precious little new data concerning the nature and impact ofTiwanaku in the cultural history of the Andes. However, I suggest that Posnansky’s life and times are very relevant to both understanding popular views and scholarly interpretations of the site.įROM THE PERSPECTIVE of the south central and southern Andes, a reconsideration of the horizon concept and its meaning could not, perhaps, have come at a better time. This has led some to dismiss him as a misguided, self-appointed champion of Tiwanaku. His ideas were strongly influenced by intellectual trends he lived though and participated in, including racist anthropology. His theories were based on little concrete information but he defended them with enviable passion. Like many pioneers, he was not trained as an archaeologist. He developed a hyperbolic narrative of Tiwanaku as the ’cradle of American man’ and tirelessly promoted it in Europe and the Americas.
While clearly not the field’s father, his commanding presence and outsized legacy could make him the czar of Tiwanaku archaeology. He dedicated nearly fifty years of his life to the study of the Andean past, which resonates through the history of Bolivian archaeology. He was a naval officer, a businessman, and a scholar. Arthur Posnansky was the illustrious pioneer of Tiwanaku archaeology, remembered as a quixotic, flamboyant, and swashbuckling character.
0 kommentar(er)
