From Marvelous Antidote to the Poison of Idolatry
The Transatlantic Role of Andean Bezoar Stones During the Late Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries
Dados Bibliográficos
| ID | 2807485 |
|---|---|
| Autores | Marcia Stephenson (autor correspondente) |
| Ano | 2010 |
| Volume | 90 |
| Fascículo | 1 |
| Páginas | 3-39 |
| Data de publicação | 2010-02-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Sim |
| Open Access | Não |
| Tipo | ARTICLE |
| Periódico | Hispanic American Historical Review (JOURNAL) |
| Identificadores do periódico | ISSN: 0018-2168 • E-ISSN: 1527-1900 |
| Editora | Duke University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1215/00182168-2009-089 |
| OpenAlex | W1966492438 |
| Idioma | EN |
| Citações recebidas | 10 |
Introducing intertwined themes of profit, the hunt for treasure, and the excavation of camelid bodies; and drawing from the analysis of Renaissance medical books, bilingual Aymara-Spanish and Quechua-Spanish dictionaries, inquisition records, and inventories of curiosity cabinets, this essay considers how Peruvian bezoar stones acquired transatlantic importance following their discovery in 1568 by a Spanish soldier. In spite of its less-than-glamorous physiological genesis as a calcinated concretion formed in the digestive tract of ruminants, including the four species of Andean camelids, the bezoar stone played a significant yet academically overlooked role in the social and economic history of modern Europe and Spanish America for its use as an antidote to poisons, and the stones constituted one of the most sought-after objects for the fashionable cabinets of curiosities belonging to Europe's powerful elites. However, for indigenous pastoral peoples, bezoars were central to the reproduction of native cultural practices and directly linked to the foundational myths of Andean cosmology. The stones were believed to protect the herds and the shepherds, for whom the camelids represented the primary source of wealth. Consequently, the bezoar stone takes on unforeseen significance as a neglected site where the colonial drama of competing epistemologies was enacted
Ancient history · Archaeology · Art · Bezoar · Drama · Ethnology · Foodways · Idolatry · Indigenous · Literature · Mythology · Sociology · Treasure · Anthropology · Classics · Colonialism, slavery, and trade · History · Latin American history and culture · Philosophy
Bibliography of Books and Articles Published in English on Colonialism and Imperialism in 2010
On Anecdote and Antidotes
Un’Avis Japonica in Vaticano? La natura dell’Oriente nella Roma del tardo Cinquecento
The Bezoar Stone
The Horn and the Relic
Piedras bezoares entre dos mundos
How to Make an Inca Mummy
Learning from the llama
The "Contagious Stench" Of Idolatry
Hybridity and the Domestication of Wildness
| Obras citantes distintas | 10 |
|---|---|
| Citações por ano | 0,67 |
| Intervalo de citações | 2011 - 2023 (13) |
| Velocidade de citação | historical |
| Altamente citado | Não |
| Tipos de citação | Neutras: 8 |