Ryan Scott Hechler

• Master of Arts
• Doctoral Candidate at Tulane University

La provincia denominada Quijos durante el colonialismo español, que llegaría a ser las modernas Napo y el oeste de Sucumbíos y Orellana, estaba compuesta por diferentes grupos étnicos. En 1577, Diego de Ortegón distinguió que la región albergaba diferentes prácticas culturales y lingüísticas únicas. Los grupos indígenas incluían a los epónimos Quij...

Throughout the late Pre-Columbian Americas, Indigenous people with disabilities and physical differences were treated in a manner different than was typical throughout Europe during the contemporary Late Middle Ages and Early Modern periods. The Inka Empire, Tawantinsuyu, particularly had its own social systems that benefited people with atypical b...

Over multiple Inka emperors’ reigns, Tawantinsuyu [the Inka Empire] had notoriously difficult experiences trying to secure their foothold in the Amazon. When marching north into modern Ecuador, the Inkas thought it best to expand westward from the highlands, with their colonial agenda prioritizing access to the Pacific Coast before the northwestern...

Este estudio trata sobre los procesos históricos de racionalización de las interacciones humano-mastodonte en Ecuador, siendo el enfoque principal el mastodonte de Alangasí. Esta investigación también examina la documentación colonial española temprana de las creencias orales Indígenas de los gigantes en los Andes y costa, que a menudo tienen víncu...

Este artículo es el primero de una serie de exploraciones que estamos desarrollando sobre la historia de Cochasquí. Comenzamos con las primeras menciones de Cochasquí del período del colonialismo español y cómo la conquista imperial Inka y las políticas coloniales españolas llevaron a la despoblación gradual de Cochasquí. A continuación, hablaremos...

In 1932, Max Uhle visited the site of Cochasquí in Ecuador’s northern highlands, a monumental center of the Cara people. Looting of the largest monument, Pyramid G, prior to his arrival revealed a corridor with Inkaic coursed masonry walls. Uhle interpreted this monument as a local pyramid modified into an Inka Sun Temple. Recent researchers have m...

Throughout the late Pre-Columbian Americas, Indigenous people with disabilities and physical differences were treated in a manner different than was typical throughout Europe during the contemporary Late Middle Ages (ca. 1250-1500) and Early Modern (ca. 1500-1800). The Inka Empire (ca. 1400-1533), Tawantinsuyu, particularly had its own social syste...

Late pre-Columbian northern Ecuadorian societies’ relationship with the ceja de selva was far from that of a peripheral zone. Such a notion has been a research obstacle in understanding this region’s links between the Amazonian lowlands, the highlands, and the Pacific coast. The concept of cultural zonal difference, I argue, is a social constructio...

The Azotea Peak ring midden study is located roughly 20 km west of Carlsbad in Eddy County in the vicinity of the Guadalupe and Sacramento Mountains. It is an exceptionally rugged terrain characterized by deeply cut washes and numerous tributaries; it is these confluences that most often contain ring midden sites identified throughout the survey ar...

The Inkas’ social constructions of physical difference recognized ‘disability’ as a permanent state of being, one that Guaman Poma de Ayala suggested was considered a specific calle or passage of life. Unlike much of the contemporary Late Middle Ages of Christian Europe, such individuals were not socially induced into aspiring for miraculous divine...

Mientras que el Período Intermedio Tardío (~AD 1000-1476) de la sierra de Perú se caracterizó por el aislamiento de comunidades, la violencia regional y las redes de intercambio cada vez más reducidas, el Ecuador septentrional de esa misma época fue un período de gran actividad interregional que vio el florecimiento de las economías de mercado. Los...

Archaeological research in Ecuador is often overlooked compared to other areas of South America that have disproportionately captured the public eye, such as the Central Andes and the Amazon Basin. Local groups have demonstrated an impressive interregional mobility throughout time, as well as there being archaeological evidence of long distance exc...

While highland Peru’s Late Intermediate Period (AD ~1000-1476) is characterized by community isolation, regional violence and shrinking exchange networks, the contemporary northern Ecuadorian Late Integration Period was a time of large-scale interregional activity that saw the flourishing of market economies. The northern Ecuadorian Andes demonstra...

The northern highland Ecuadorian site of Cochasquí is one of the country’s most respected archaeological resources. Investigations by archaeologists Jacinto Jijón y Caamaño (1910s), Max Uhle (1932), and Udo Oberem (1964-65) had principally focused on this Late Period site’s highly visible quadrangular earthen pyramids, which can reach heights of ap...

The Inka push into northern Ecuador under Emperor Thupa Inka Yupanki ended in largely a stalemate, with Quito effectively operating as a new Inka center at the imperial frontlines. Relationships with the newly encountered Cara ethnic group were allegedly contentious – the ethnohistoric record suggests that the Inkas viewed these various communities...

Throughout the Inka Empire, people with physical differences were treated in a manner greatly different than was typical in Spain and Europe during the 16th century. The Inkas developed their own social perceptions that benefited the hank’akuna (historically defined and rationalized by Spanish priests as being Quechua for “disabled”) and institutio...

El Morro de Tulcán is a massive quadrangular earthen mound located near Popayán in the sierra of southwestern Colombia. This structure towers over the surrounding landscape with a height of 50 meters at its highest point. This pyramid is an anomaly within the surrounding cultural vicinity, as quadrangular earthen mounds in particular are nonexisten...

Andean scholars have long debated the northern limits of Tawantinsuyu. Historic sources claimed a boundary marker was established at the Angasmayu River, a toponym that no longer exists although allegedly it was north of Pasto territory in modern Colombia. Archaeology in southern Colombia and along the northern Ecuadorian border has been sporadical...

Serpent adoration has had a long history throughout the Pre-Columbian Andes, as can be seen in artistic representations from cultures as geographically and temporally diverse as the Chavín, Nasca, Moche, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Chachapoyas, to name a few. It is no surprise the Inkas were equally fascinated by serpents, fearing and venerating them in bo...

Most Spanish colonial-era chroniclers claim that the Inkas found forest societies’ lands to be worthless due to the presence of dense vegetation and uncontrollable fauna, furthermore they stereotyped the people themselves as “Indians of war” and “proud and vicious.” In general, the Inkas were ineffective against the montaña and selva ethnic groups,...

This paper will review iconographic representations of physical disabilities and differences from several Andean societies from different time periods, such as the Inka, Chimú, Wari, Tiwanaku, and Moche. People with physical disabilities were actively included in many societies throughout the Pre-Columbian Andes. Many Andean cultures developed thei...

Throughout Tawantinsuyu, people with physical disabilities and differences were treated in a manner greatly different than was typical in the European Late Middle Ages and Early Modern. The Inkas developed their own social perceptions that benefited the hank’akuna (Quechua for “disabled”) and institutionalized measures to guarantee that such people...

This thesis examines how the Inkas’ preconceptions of two neighboring Ecuadorian societies, the Caranqui Confederation and the Yumbos, affected imperial methods of subjugation. Drawing upon a mixture of primary historical sources as well as previous archaeological and ethnohistoric research, I suggest that regional Inka-proclaimed imperial accompli...

Wherever the Inkas expanded their empire, Tawantinsuyu, they would begin the state-sponsored construction of architecture, which operated as imperial apparatuses in their own right. An exceptional construction that spread throughout Tawantinsuyu was the bath, which could operate as landmarks of imperial exclusivity, be central for spiritual ritual...

In 1924 the Commonwealth of Virginia introduced the Racial Integrity Act, a law that created a draconian system of institutionalized racism via the establishment of a biracial census (“white” and “colored”), rules of marriage, as well as the formal legal establishment of eugenics; to put it simply, the 1924 act blatantly created a legal defense of...

The term "creolization" is often utilized to explain the complexities and effects of colonialism on art, particularly folk art, in the Americas. With this in mind, Chesapeake Pipes, a pipe style that originated in the 17th century, allegedly reflected a combination of Eastern Woodland Native American, West African, and European aesthetic traditions...

The Virginia Bureau of Vital Statistics directly shaped the state of Virginia’s notions of race in the early 20th century via institutionalized racism and eugenics. The 1912-1946 head registrar of the Bureau, Walter Ashby Plecker, was a leading member of the Anglo-Saxon Clubs of America and was subsequently imposing club policy into law during the...

The British colonists of North America and the West Indies were historically notorious for their mass importation of African slaves and the subsequent development of a capitalistic dependence on the slave trade that fueled the labor of the British plantation system; with that in mind, the existence of enslaved Native Americans and their effect on t...

Spanish colonial Andean church architecture is often described by art historians of the contemporary as a product of cultural and stylistic hybridity, a resultant amalgamation due to a colonial collision of Spanish and Andean culture and art. Hybridity is in itself highly reliant on location and cultural encounter and thus I would argue that there...