The Emergence of Early Modern Commodities in the Andes: Camanchacas, Seafood, and Arbitrageurs of Southern Colonial Peru

Abstract

The commodification of native resources was central to the genesis of colonial markets. Many self-sufficient polities inhabited the preconquest Andes and did not rely on regular market exchange. The discovery of the Potosí mines motivated migration and urban growth to a level never seen before: for the first time, a large urban community needed a regular supply of commodities. The Native communities of the surrounding region produced part of the food and resources consumed in Potosí. The Andean fishing communities of Tarapacá (northern Chile) form one such case. This work addresses the creation of the first modern Andean commodities by analyzing the archaeological and documentary remains of an early seventeenth-century colonial fishery at the mouth of the Loa River, exploring its occupants, spaces, daily praxis, and the social mechanisms involved in seafood commodification. Results show the degree to which the fishery depended on the labor of Native Camanchaca fishers, their techniques and technologies and the actions of powerful entrepreneurs, but also on the persistence of Andean ceremonial and political arrangements. Commercialization and the market expanded through the preservation of fish for deferred consumption and the strategic movement of the resource through multiple distribution channels and communities.