Christopher Heaney

To pre-Hispanic peoples in Huarochirí, Peru, donning a huayo, a facial-bone mask, re-animated ancestors and honored enemies, celebrating their victories. Following these masks’ description in a unique c. 1608 Quechua-language manuscript, Spanish priests sought their destruction to extirpate their “idolatry.” Our project, however, has identified four possible huayos extracted from Huarochirí in the 1880s and in museums outside of Peru. On behalf of municipal and communal representatives of San Mateo de Huánchor, in Huarochirí, we have begun research on one possible huayo’s identity, ritualization, extraction, and future status. Our Wenner-Gren Engaged Research Grant will support the possible huayo’s ethnohistorical contextualization; a proposed visit by community leaders to one of the involved museums in the U.S. to discuss the possible huayo’s relationship to modern masked dances and environmental knowledge; excavation of the site from which the community believes the possible huayo was taken, to promote identification with the pre-Hispanic past and support the site’s protection; and repatriate knowledge of the possible huayo via theater performances, publications, and development of a proposal for a local exhibit. With our community partners we will evaluate this process as a model for collaborative, ethical research on the other three possible huayos, exploring how Andean ancestors dislocated by earlier anthropological collecting might be responsibly re-encountered today.