Andean Aymara

The journal Child’s Nervous System has what appears to be an interesting article by Schijman on this interesting cultural phenomenon in pre-Columbine Andean culture. The article includes a picture to illustrate the “artificial deformation” of an Aymara skull from Humahuaca (Jujuy, Argentina). Schijman mentions the Aymara in his text only twice. He writes:
In certain pre-Columbine cultures like the [...]

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Below is a slideshow of some artefacts shown to me by denizens of some small villages in the Moqueguan altiplano. I have a handful more, but these are the ones which Charles Stanish, an expert in Andean archaeology, has kindly identified (see captions).
The ominpresence of history in these remote locations is something fascinating and unique. [...]

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The Americanists in the Netherlands event, AiN6, is scheduled for tomorrow afternoon at the Radboud Universiteit in Nijmegen (details on their website).
I will be presenting a talk entitled ”Expressing degrees of certainty: A sketch of the Aymara evidential system”. The abstract is below. If you’re in the area, why not stop by.
The Aymara evidential system encodes [...]

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In a recent exchange about the death of the last speaker of Bo, Lyle Campbell summarized very well the current status of Amerind languages.
He writes that when the first Europeans arrived, there were some 280 languages or so in the US which could be divided into 51 families (incl. isolates). Currently some 150 survive and [...]

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On 18 February the Americanists in the Netherlands will be meeting from 2-5 at the Radboud Universiteit Nijmegen in room E203. The three talks will be made by Pieter Muysken and Mily Crevels, Loretta O’Connor, and myself. Muyskens will present on the “Lenguas de Bolivia” project, O’Connor will talk about geographical information systems, and I [...]

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Todos que estudaram línguas aglutinantes como o aimara e a quíchua têm notado que muitas vezes uma única palavra em uma língua corresponde a uma frase inteira em um idioma românico ou germânico. Normalmente, essa palavra aglutinante é muito extensa e contém muitos morfemas tanto nominais como verbais –  às vezes, até as palavras bissillábicas [...]

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There is a photo exhibit by Odileiz Cruz, a fellow alumnus of the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam open until the end of this month at CEDLA (UvA) on Keizersgracht 395-397 in Amsterdam, in which she shows some photos from her fieldwork with this group in Roraima, Brazil.
There are only a few pictures, but it is still [...]

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