Tuesday 10 March, 18.00-19.30
S8.08, History Department, King's College London
We are very pleased to welcome Dr Helen Cowie from the University of York to speak on ‘Where the Woolly Things Are: Studying and Exploiting Alpacas and Vicuñas in Colonial Spanish America’ as part of the short seminar series on ‘Innovation, Utility, and Expertise in Early Modern Science’ hosted by the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine and the Department of History.
When Spanish conquistadors arrived in America in the sixteenth century they were confronted by a stunning variety of new plants and animals previously unknown to Europeans. Among the most notable and surprising were the camelids of Peru – the llama, alpaca, guanaco and vicuña – exploited by the Incas for their meat and wool and accorded a prominent part in Andean religion. Focusing on the colonial era, this paper examines how the Spanish represented, classified and used Peruvian camelids and considers how knowledge about the llama and alpaca was accumulated and transferred between cultures and continents. I explore the use of camelids as beasts of burden in the silver mines, sources of bezoar stones (valued as antidotes to poison) and providers of high quality wool and discuss attempts to naturalise the vicuña and alpaca in Spain in the late eighteenth century. I use the case study of Peruvian camelids to illustrate wider process of natural knowledge exchange within the Hispanic World.
All are welcome.
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