Entered May 30

Fig.___ Map, Northwest Amazon

Figs. __ and __ Baniwa grater boards (photos)
Figs ___ Petroglyph, northwest Amazon (photo)
Figs. __, __, ___. Three variants of Kowheapo design elements. (drawings)

"Translating Ideologies"

Janet Chernela
Department of Anthropology
University of Maryland
(jchernela@anth.umd.edu)

Introduction
Text creation, including the symbolic configurations borne by material objects,
are the tools through which social structure is constructed. Among the most important
sets of meanings are those that signify group identity and the placement of any group vis
à vis others. These are transferred across generations through the transmission process. In
the course of that process the logical coherence underlying a system of signification is
decoded. In the transmission of such knowledge, sets of meanings are deconstructed,
manipulated, reconstructed, and reified. In the case at hand physical objects, rather than
verbal communication, function as signifiers of history with profound consequences for
social life. Moreover, as we will show here, material objects are fundamental agents in
both the construction of history and the related creation of the present and future.
The paper takes as its case grater boards produced by Baniwa-speakers living
along the Aiarí River, an affluent of the Içana River in the northwest Amazon of Brazil.
Grater boards have a special place in community, history, and relations in the northwest
Amazon for several reasons. First, the Baniwa are the sole producers of grater boards, a
necessary item in everyday food production throughout three river basins. They are used
in the preparations of breads, flours, and all basic foods derived from bitter manioc
(Manihot esculenta), the poisonous, yet primary staple crop of the region. In its raw state,
the so-called "bitter" tuber contains high concentrations of cyanic acid which must be

1
released before the tuber is edible. The process is a laborious one, necessitating the
breaking up of the rock-hard tuber to allowing the liquid to drain and then heating the
pulp so that the volatile acid vaporizes. While all peoples in the region go through the
same process, only the Baniwa have access to the quartz deposits from which the grater
teeth are made. Among the craft monopolies in the region, theirs alone attaches them to
place.
Second, the boards are abundant carriers of cultural information. The form of the
boards and the design motifs with which they are ornamented are regarded by the Baniwa
as their exclusive property. As such, the boards and the designs on them index Baniwa
identity. Baniwa rationalize this viewpoint based upon reading signs in the landscape,
that link contemporary Baniwa to their past and to the lands which they occupy.
A third aspect of the boards with some interest to ethnologists and
ethnoarchaeologists is their distribution in space. From their origin on the Aiarí River,
Baniwa grater boards are distributed via marriage networks over an area encompassing
the Uaupés River, its affluents the Papurí and Tiquié, and the Japurá River -- the latter a
full 300 km south of the Aiarí (see map). The distribution of grater boards follows and
maps Baniwa marriage and other group interactions throughout an area of some 90,000
km2. Among its goals, this chapter considers the narrative motivation for the transfer of
Baniwa signs through space and across generations.
Theoretical Background
A persisting debate within both sociocultural anthropology and archaeology is
whether the distinction, heuristic or real, between “cultural/internal” and
“natural/external” phenomena a useful one. Many scholars, among them the prominent
and innovative theorist Lewis Binford, find symbolic information extraneous to the goals
and practices of archaeology (Binford 1972, 2002). At the other extreme, Ian Hodder has
argued for two decades that a primary consideration in the study of material items is the
role played by them in the formation of symbolic complexes (Hodder 1982a, 1982b,
1992). The case of Baniwa grater boards presented here convincingly demonstrates the
complementarity and necessity of both symbolic-interpretive and artifact-distributional
approaches. Each perspective renders the other comprehensible and, for that reason, we
argue, neither is sufficient alone. An analysis of Baniwa grater boards demonstrates the

2
fallacy of a attempting to dichotomize internal culture and external nature. As the grater
boards illustrate, it is by signifying the landscape, then transmitting that signification
through artifact networks, that peoples negotiate their relation to one another and to
space. In the act of signification the cultural and the natural are merged. The grater
board, as a medium that reproduces signs found in the landscape, then re-contextualizes
them into economic, social, and political domains, well exemplifies the indivisibility of
“culture” and “nature.” In order to bring symbolism to the fore in archaeological
analysis, Hodder reached into the powerful -- and then new -- paradigm,
ethnoarchaeology (Hodder 1982b).
A founding contributor to ethnoarchaeology, Carol Kramer, whose legacy of
achievement is honored in this volume, early recognized (1985:88) the critical role
played by style typologies in justifying and reifying social structures. Kramer argued that
typologies -- established through formal stylistic variation -- provided the material basis
for ideologies of place both physiographic and social (1985). This is but one of the many
areas in which Kramer's belief in transgressing anthropology's own cultural boundaries in
order to further productive dialogue has produced important results. As an ethnologist I
find it an honor to contribute to a collective effort at "breaking down" artificial
boundaries.
Signification: Material Culture as Historic Text
As Saussure specified and Ricoeur reiterated, the link between signifier and
signified is arbitrary; that is -- the signifier has no natural connection to the signified. It
is precisely because social systems do create meanings, rather than "find" them in the
external world, that we cannot separate the external from the internal. Through the
processes of learning and socialization in which the arbitrariness of signifier and signified
is temporarily revealed, systems of meanings can be penetrated and grasped. Symbolic
systems are coherent only to those who can "read" them. The arbitrariness of signs
requires that transmitter and recipient subscribe to the same set of assigned meanings.
Because symbols are without "natural" linkages or grounding in reality, the shared
understandings of systems of meanings requires systematic exposure -- often through
socialization -- to the encoding process. The socialization process also reproduces the
limits on both the meanings of messages and the socio-spatial range within which a sign

3
is meaningful. In the Northwest Amazon where societies of different linguistic and
symbolic systems intermarry and interact, it would seem necessary that they find reliable
means to ensure that important messages are mutually understood.
For most historians, Amazonia is invented with its discovery by European
chroniclers. The relevant texts, located in symbolic clusters on material objects, and
generally illegible to historians, have been ignored. In the Northwest Amazon, rock
paintings, and the meanings assigned them, constitute an objectifying device that finds
correlation between observable, fixed phenomena in the landscape and the abstractly
defined constructs of social origins. Signification in rock art is a means through which
generations record, remember, construct, reconstruct, and interpret their world. Being
fixed in space, the rocks and their engravings stand for and legitimize a constructed
thingness of social identity, group affiliation, and rights to place (see photo # __).
For the twenty different linguistico-descent groups in the northwest Amazon,
rock engravings carry mythico-historic accounts about their origins. These encapsulating
signs of history encode a normative relationship between event, structure, and place.
Baniwa speakers of the Brazilian northwest Amazon inscribe historical knowledge into
the landscape, thereby encoding events and authorizing group relations.
The grater boards are one example of an artifact that carries te signs of their
makers from their settlements of origin across a distant network of other language groups
into which Baniwa women marry.
Ethnographic Background: Pragmatic Space and Local Logic
The area referred to as the Northwest Amazon is circumscribed by two principal
affluents of the Rio Negro -- the Içana and the Uaupés along the Brazilian, Colombian,
and Venezuelan borders (see map). The region is occupied by approximately twenty
intermarrying tribes1, each possessing its own language yet sharing a common culture.
Each language group is seen as a patrilineal descent group or patriclan, related to other
language groups through marriage. In this broad regional network2, marital and kin ties
unite some 14,000 Indians.

In the northwest Amazon that which constitutes the intermarrying, social universe
is an organization of diverse linguistic repertoires in which each code references a social

4
group and thereby the relationship of that group, and the speakers of that group, to all
others (Chernela 2003). Each linguistic variety performs a social function, indexing
group membership and kinship within a unified cultural system in which language is a
primary icon of identity (Jackson 1974). Named language varieties regarded as
commensurate with a putative descent lines are considered by speakers to be sharply
bounded.

Speech in this context may be usefully viewed as a form of role specialization in

which language marks membership in a particular social group, thus defining the
relationship of that group (and individual) to all others. Together, the repertoire of codes
operates in one overarching communicative system in which each code is a unit in a
mosaic of diverse linguistic varieties. Out-marriage creates binding ties of mutual
dependency.

The settlements of a single language group are located within relative proximity
of one another. Because they combine a belief in patrilineal filiation with the practice of
patrilocal residence, settlements are comprised of a core of patrilineally-related male kin
with their daughters and in-marrying wives. Wives, who originate in other local descent
groups, are typically speakers of other languages. Wife-exchanging units are also
artifact-exchanging units so that intermarriage, as well as an elaborate trade network of
specialized craft items, link settlements across river basins (Jackson 1974, 1976;
Chernela 1992, 1993). On the basis of the presence of specialized crafts, it should be
possible to determine the origins of all of the wives in a village. The wife's descent group
will, during its turn at exchange, supply every household in the son-in-law's village with
its specialized product.

The Baniwa

Within this broad social and economic network are the Baniwa,3 members of the
Northern Arawakan linguistic family (also known by the names Curripaco and
Wakuenai) who live in Brazil, Colombia and Venezuela. An estimated 3,000 Baniwa4
are located in Brazil along the Içana River and its affluents. A similar number reside in
Colombia, and an additional 1,600 in Venezuela (Hill and Wright 1988), bringing the
total estimated population at 7,600.5

5
 The Hohodene Baniwa, who live on the Aiarí affluent of the Içana River in
Brazil, participate in the marriage exchange network that includes the Uaupés basin. The
Hohodene obtain marriage partners from the Wanano, Kubeo, Desana, and other Eastern
Tukanoan-speaking peoples of the Uaupés River, whose villages are linked overland to
theirs by footpaths from 7 to 12 kms long. Settlements are predictably located on high
ground where the river encounters granite outcroppings. The boulders at these sites
produce cataracts in low water seasons and cascades or steep falls in periods of high
water.
The Hohodene Baniwa are sedentary fisher-horticulturalists, with fish providing
the principal source of protein, and manioc the principal source of carbohydrates. These
items, and the utensils used to gather or process them, are essential to the sharing of
resources which occurs informally within a settlement on a daily basis, and formally on
an intermittent basis among settlements or sibs. Minimal exploitation of resources
characterizes day-to-day life; intensive exploitation occurs prior to elaborate in-law
exchange ceremonies.

Style, Specialized Manufacture, and Group Identity

In the Northwest Amazon, boundaries between kin groups are reified and
reproduced by different language production and specialized craft manufacture, creating
an artifice of difference within an otherwise homogeneous cultural system. Each
language group is the exclusive manufacturer of a product it trades with its affines (in-
laws) in exchange ceremonies. In this system of craft monopoly, each item explicitly
broadcasts the group affiliation of its maker. Since each artifact is the exclusive
production of members of one language group, and form and design are standardized
within the language group, the object and its design stand for the group itself. The
designs upon them are analogous to the well-known heraldic symbols that identified
sociopolitical entities in Europe.
The Baniwa are the only makers of boards used in grating manioc tubers; the
Tukano make wooden benches used by shamans in curing; the Wanano produce the
wahpanio, a strainer used in removing liquid from the grated manioc mash; and the
Desana produce tightly woven balaio baskets in which the prepared manioc bread is

6
served. Each stage of manioc processing references group contribution and
interdependency. Using the grater boards, produced by the Baniwa, a woman transforms
the dense root into a pulp; she allows the pulp to drain in a wahpanio strainer, made
exclusively by the Wanano; when she serves the finished bread it will be in a balaio
basket, whose style and design are uniquely Desana.
These items are exchanged in ceremonials known as po'oa or podali, where a
donor group, say a father-in-aw, recruits all of the members of his descent group to
prepare gifts for the descent group of his son-in-law. The receiving group must
reciprcate at a later date with their own specialized craft in equal or greater value
(Chernela 1993). Each trade item is associated with a specific exchange value. One
grater board, for example, is the equivalent in value of one shaman's bench, but six-eight
of any other article, such as strainers or baskets.
The structured flow moves finished products from designated insiders to
designated outsiders. There the decorated trade items remain, carrying a complex array
of stylistic messages that serve to identify the affiliation and origin of the producing
group and establish the solidarity of this in trade. As grater boards traverse community
boundaries of intermarrying settlements, it is the out-marrying Baniwa women who are
the source of authority in the interpretations of grater board style elements and the
messages and implications they carry.
Methodology
This study was conducted in two phases. In phase one, carried out between 1978
and 1980, conducted participant observation in a Wanano community, located along the
Uaupes River, in which many of the wives were Baniwa. The village and its partner in-
law village, a Baniwa village, were located seven kilometers distance from one another
by footpath. The two villages had exchanged spouses over many generations, so that the
many of the daughters who grew up in the Wanano village spent their adult years in the
Baniwa village and vice versa. In 1992 I published a paper based on the material
exchanges between those communities and others in the intermarrying social universe.
The second phase began in 1999 when I returned to the region and renewed
contact with one now-adult daughter (a Wanano), her Baniwa husband, Agosto Fontes,
and their Baniwa son. At that time I initiated a research project on Baniwa grater-board

7
making with Agosto Fontes and his son. Over the next four years I conducted a series of
interviews concerning 1) specialization of labor in grater board production; 2) grater
board design typologies, 3) the range of variation within each; 4) meanings associated
with stylistic elements; 5) the origins of these elements, 6) rules and practices associated
with their transmission, and 7) the recognized rights to the motifs. I was provided with
verbal answers as well as pictorial depictions. I was supplied with an inventory of grater
board designs, named classes, and examples of variants of each named motif. //I also
solicited and received, by mail, drawings with names of Baniwa style elements.
////renewed relations with Margarida and Agosto. Since then I have worked
closely with them on the subject of grater board production and design typologies.
Agosto and Margarida, as well as their son and brother-in-law, Mateus Cabral,6 served as
the main informants for this chapter.]
Material Culture as Historic Text
As we have said, principal settlements are always associated with a cluster of
boulders. Residents of local patriclans, including Baniwa, Desana, and Wanano, find in
the boulders signs of cosmological events. Through this objectifying, causal narrative,
rock engravings are rendered "evidentiary" of rightful placement in space. These signs
are said to "speak" (ni), to "show" (nyona), and to provide the "appearance" or
"evidence" (baho) of the past. "We can still see the past," say the residents of the region.
As signs of events in ancient times, the engravings link living Baniwa to the ancestors.
Through this process of fixity and thingness, the Baniwa de-problematize the notion of
group identity, spatial privileges, and access.
The recognized pattern references a way of being-in-the-world constituted by
human action and theories of causality and connection. The act of repetition fixes
meaning and reduces the autonomy of a text. Rather than expanding meanings infinitely,
these narratives strategically limit their possibilities. The historical account aims to be a
“true,” not fictive, narrative. Here the rock engravings play a critical role -- through them
events are given realities. This is of special import where claims of identities and
privilege might be contested. In such an instance the engraving would constitute a form
of "contract." Yet the interpretation of any motif depends upon the viewpoint of the
reader and his/her positioning with relation to the issues at stake.

8
 Examples of narratives that link petroglyphs to mythological founder narratives
are shown here:
A Desana example: The following example, excerpted from Colombian
anthropologist Gerardo Reichel-Dolmatoff, illustrates the reading of the origin of the
Desana peoples in a rock engraving. I paraphrase the report provided him by the Desana
infomant Antonio Guzman:
At Wainibi Rapids stood the first longhouse of the Desana. Boreka Mango,
a woman who was the daughter of Aracu, was irresistably drawn to the light of the
men's fire. There she found Gahki, the first Desana, and consorted with him. From
their union the first Desana clan was born. One can still see the imprints on the
rock showing where Ghaki and Boreka Mango lay together (Reichel-Dolmatoff
1968:30).
A Wanano Example. The following Wanano example portrays how members
of the Biari sib perceive in the boulders the stone remains of their founder Biari. The
village in which the descendants of Biari reside, said to have been there since ancestral
times, overlooks the waterfall in which the boulder can be seen. This informant's
statement is representative: Adorned in his shamanic regalia, “Biari [our ancestor], a sat
on his shaman’s bench and lowered himself into the ground. There he remained. You
can still see him there, where he sat – in the falls. Only his head remained above the
ground. It was transformed into stone."
Baniwa examples:
1. The German ethnographer Koch-Grünberg (1995: 137 (my trans.) writes
of his visit to the Aiarí, "The waterfalls of Bocoepana and Hipana, a short distance
from one another on the Aiary, are true water falls of great scale…. In both falls
we found well-defined petroglyphs, equal to any in the Aiary region, with historic
testimonies that abound where Arawak groups reside. In general, these [historic]
designs are similar to those made by the Indians today in their utensils and
tools…..I observed a human figure with well developed genital organs; it was
explained to me that this represented Kuai or Koai, also called Uamundana and
Manhekanalienipe, son of Yaperikuli, founder of the Arawakan groups that
populate this region."

9
 2. Lastly, this citation from the Baniwa chief of Uapuí, reported by Berta
Ribeiro (1980), demonstrates the importance of the motifs themselves as message
units: "The ancestors left designs engraved on the stones so that their descendants
would not forget them, and instead honor ancestral traditions." Pointing to the
petroglyph, the speaker continues, "Iñapelikuli (the Creator of the Baniwa) left this
design (ikuarun) there to serve as an indication" (Ribeiro 1980:379).
Marking Territory
For the Baniwa of the Aiarí, rock engravings were thought to be put in place by
the first ancestors and intended to mark Baniwa territory. The stylistic elements on the
rocks are considered to be the intellectual property of the Baniwa. [[[ These perceived
motifs allow the Baniwa to read in the landscape their specific origins, their myths,
and their ____. The petroglyphs reinforce and reify spatial boundaries, Any
historic discourse originates in the specific perspective of the narrator and is
constructed, consciously or unconsciously, for specific ideological ends. Because
laws defining rights to land are phrased in terms of antecedence, historic narratives
that link native Americans to the lands they occupy play a critical role in the
shaping of the future autonomy of indigenous peoples. ]]]
Portions of the markings on rocks are selectively excised from the field of
continuous imagery and rendered discreet elements. An assemblage of these motifs are
regarded by the Baniwa as ancestral signs that comprise their cultural patrimony, forming
a Baniwa "trademark" or "signature." By reproducing these motifs, the grater boards bear
the elements of style regarded by the Baniwa as their property. The selected elements
comprise an inventory or assemblage of collectively recognized and named motifs
subject to stringent canons of stylistic coherence. I will call these patterned designs
elements of style; in an abbreviated manner I will refer to them simply as “designs” or
“patterns.”
The Grater Board: Ada
As we have said, the grater boards (ada in Baniwa, sókono or sókoro in Tukano),
are the specialized manufacture of the Baniwa. Beginning a process that will last
approximately one week, men carve the boards from marupa wood (Simaruba amara) in
a stylistically distinct, concave shape (Figs. __ and __). All men must learn to carve and

10
design the boards since no specialized artisans perform the role for others. Once they
have sculpted the board, the men draw and incise the designs.
The board consists of two distinct portions. The first, occupying about one-third
of its length, is called the grater's "nose" (Ban., adahitáku = grater, nose). This end,
which allows the woman to stabilize the board while grounding tubers, contains a vertical
plane of wood that serves as a handle, and it is known as the “nose.” The lower two-
thirds of the board constitutes the grating surface.7 Using the point of a machete, men
incise a square frame at the center of this portion which they fill with a geometric design.
The designs consist of sets of parallel straight lines cut across one another in one of a
number of characteristic designs. Precision is valued and craftsmen often rely on the
straight edge of a palm frond. The maker perforates the design surface at regular
intervals using a nail. Only then is the board handed to the wife who gently hammers in
the quartzite chips, referred to as the grater’s “teeth.” Finally, the entire board is covered
with a resin created of sorva (Couma spp.) and ash and then painted red and black. The
finished boards range in size from about 40-60 cm in width to 60-120 cm in length (figs.
__ and __).
When she is setting the stones, a woman sits on the floor with the board resting on
her thighs so that the “nose” portion, which would ordinarily be closest to her upper
body, is furthest away, lying along her legs. Instead, the “lower” portion is against her
abdomen so that she is able to better insert the small stone chips. When used in grating
the tubers, a seated woman lays the concave board flat upon her outstretched legs and
holds it firmly against her body by adjusting the handle at the top, narrower end of the
board. She draws the peeled manioc tubers across the sharp grater teeth, accumulating a
pulp at the far end. The pulp will be strained and heated to produce one of the many
varieties of processed manioc, including breads, drinks, and flour.
Morphological Study of Motifs
While the upper, smooth, portion receives a wide range of designs, including
sokoro oori (flowers of the grater) and makaru (butterflies), the lower, stone-encrusted
surface receives only a limited number of designs.
The designs form part of what the Hohodene regard as an ancestral legacy -- a
corpus of motif elements that are passed down from father to son, and are considered a

11
“closed” or “patented” inventory. Given this assumption, the simplicity of the design
elements is striking:
Diahke = Infinite line (resembling the Greek "key" motif)
Paitsi-iapii = Frog Bone
Kowheapo = Ant Trail
Itsidafi = Turtle Shell
Designs are regarded as collective, not individual, possessions. At the same
time innovations may occur that allow identification of the individual craftsman.
These innovations are transmitted from father to son, who carve the boards and
incise them according to a repertoire of style elements. Although innovations are
constrained, the minor variations introduced by fathers and passed down by sons
creates a traceable record of patrifiliation and marriage through style. Whatever
innovations occur, they are kept within narrow limits and may not challenge the
underlying rule that "stylistic elements are received, not created."
While each design class defines a field of possibility, some variation is
permitted while remaining within recognizable prarameters of the design. For
example, the kowheapo design, meaning "ant path," is a motif that appears with great
frequency on graterboards. It consists of a ground of equidistant, narrowly-spaced
horizontal lines cross-cut/transected by "ant paths" -- columns of parallel lines that
are foregrounded. In the unmarked variety, the horizontal lines are cut by vertical
lines at right angles in sets of 2 or 4. The father-and-son board-makers with whom I
worked produced two additional variations.
In the first variation of kowheapo produced by the pair, the ground of
horizontal parallel lines is transected by “ant paths” that traverse it in parallel at an
angle. In the second variation, the field of horizontal lines is splayed down the
middle, and equally spaced parallel lines transect the ground at the same angle on
either side of a vertical axis, producing a symmetrical, “herring-bone” effect. All
three designs are still within the parameters of kowheapo. Yet, in a fourth
arrangement, where the field is bisected both horizontally and vertically, with
symmetrical mirror images in all four quadrants, the design becomes a marked,
named variant, known as Paitsi-iapii, meaning “frog bone.” (Fig. __-__). In spite of

12
 the different name, the design is actually a duplication. In the "variation" mentioned
above, the design differs only insofar as a standard design is duplicated in a mirror
image. This "flipping" (mahanipaio) -- a concept regarded as an attribute of skill in
design and in speech -- is a process that allows limited play within fixed design
constraints.
Variation 4 is a transformation produced by relaxing the rule of right angle
relationship between all lines then re-contexualizing the direction of each so that four
mirroring quadrants surround a central perpendicular axis. The resulting innovation falls
outside the semantic field recognized as the "Ant Trail," a common motif within the
Baniwa design repertoire. This variation appears to mark the authorship of the
graterboard makers. If it were continued in future generations it could act as a trace of
the patriline that produced it. And, since the grater boards move from the site of
production outward, the distribution of the boards and their motifs could be read as a
network of relationships over time.
When the horizontal and the vertical lines are arranged in a Greek "key” form, the
design is a separate class, known as Diahke, glossing as "infinite pattern." This, too, is
a common motif in grater boards.
Learning: Transmitting Ideology
All Baniwa boys must learn the craft of grater-board making from their fathers.
The act of carving, incising, and painting designs on a grater board are thought of as
consecrated acts. In the process of teaching a design, the Baniwa teacher, who is a boy's
father, regards himself as a conduit of the ancestors who relegated the designs to the
Baniwa and named them. They invoke the ancestors and ritually reproduce an
individual's sense of belonging in a patriclan. The knowledge involved in transferring the
skill of craftsmanship in the making of the grater board is understood to be knowledge
obtained from a distant past via generational linkages. Thus the father is regarded as an
agent or conduit of an authoritative and legitimizing source. In this way the act of
teaching is itself a religious act, one that connects the son to his father, the patriline, the
ancestors, and the place in which creator Iñapelikuli is depicted in stone. The historic
and cosmological information is conveyed in the process of learning to reproduce the
elements of style, the domination of the father over the information, and the monopoly of

13
the Baniwa over the typological system. As Kramer noted in 1985, in the reproduction of
typologies so too is cultural ideology reproduced.
In the transmission process the act of naming a design excises it and establishes
its autonomy from the context that surrounds it. In this proces the symbol and referent are
termporarily disentangled, in order to be recontextualized in the craft production. It is
also is an effective mnemonic device. Naming permits talking about the form without the
presence of a referent. Denomination also establishes a frame or boundary around a field
of variation, defining the amount of random variation permissible within the class, and
specifying what variation falls outside.
The Hohodene Baniwa reproduce the monopoly of their designs and their territory
by adhering to close reproduction rather than broad interpretation, alteration or outright
invention. They attempt to limit individual variation in favor of collective representation.
Rather than individual "expression," the learning exercise is thought to be an act of
collective submission -- the combined processes of internalization and transmission. It is
incumbent upon the craftsman to preserve -- not alter -- the motifs, thus collapsing
ancestral time with the present and fixing Baniwa descent group identity. The
legitimizing power of the design element is derived from its ancestral origin.
Theoretically it would not be possible to invent a new design and lattitude for craftsmen
is not extensive. Each new rendering is expected to replicate a prototype. Individual
agency, for the Baniwa, ought to be backgrounded rather than foregrounded. This means
that a certain amount of variation must be rendered irrelevant or "noise." Like
handwriting, a degree of latitude is permissible so long as the element is recognizable and
meaningful. The variants of kowheapo may “stretch the envelope," but they can only do
so within strict limitations.
Theoretically the role of the Baniwa male artisans is to maintain an invariance of
pattern, and through it a persisting social polity within a context of of difference. This
notion requires a set of principles that limit variance and define socially-recognized
elements that are rendered relevant and meaningful. These are revealed in the processes
of transmission from one generation to the next. Their importance is demonstrated in the
linkages between design elements, the legitimizing source of the elements left by the
ancestors in the landscape and the entitling implications of these signs.

14
 Discussion
The use of material culture as a source of signification for constructing history
and legitimacy of territorial rights is not uncommon. A number of authors demonstrate
the role played by cartographies -- narrative readings of the landscape in the practical
shaping of rights and autonomy of indigenous peoples within a global context. In
Amazonia, Silvia Vidal describes a "cartography” created through journey narratives
used to interpret the past (2003: 33, 50). For the Venezuelan Warekena, one group of
Baniwa, she writes, cartography "is both a sociogeography of their traditional territory
and a cosmological mapping” (2003:50). The Warekena relied on features in the
landscape such mountains, rivers, and rocks, in order to claim rights to lands, deemed,
through these narratives, as “historic markers” (Vidal 2003:56).
A similar historicizing function of mapping the landscape is discussed by
Domingo Medina for the De'kuana, also of Venezuela. Medina describes how the
symbol-laden journey of the culture hero Kuyujani is a history "embedded in the
landscape linking the De'kuana to their past, their myths, and their land" (Medina
2003:10). In a recent demarcation effort, the De'kuana utilized the Kyujani narratives to
map and legitimize land claims. Medina writes that such mapping "crystallizes the
history, the language, and the space in a format that will allow future generations to
continue revising, interpreting, analyzing, and rewriting their history" (2003: 10). These
accounts demonstrate how "signs in history" are used in land negotiations and play
important roles, recognized by governments, in shaping present and future rights.
Neil Whitehead discusses timehri, petroglyph markings regarded by the Patamuna
of Guyana as the “writing of the ancestors.” Whitehead writes about all such topographic
signification when he writes, “For the Patamuna the construction of history is as much
about the present as it is about things past. In this way prophecy is history since the
meaning of what has been can only be understood in relation to the things that are and are
to come" (Whitehead 2003: 72).
Conclusion: Translating Ideology
Ideology, then, is served and sustained into the future by symbolization of the
natural landscape. We have said that the designs on Baniwa grater boards are regarded
by the Baniwa as left on the boulders by their ancestors, thereby providing them with

15
privileges solely belonging to the Baniwa. Learning conditions favor the formation of
identifiable styles passed from father to son since the specialized items are always the
manufacture of men living in patrilineal, patrilocal communities. The graterboards,
whose manufacture is monopolized -- transfer these signs/designs and their "dedicated
motifs" throughout the basin, where they function as trademarks, establishing the place
of the Baniwa in the social, political,and economic landscape of the northwest Amazon.
Baniwa occupation in space is especially important to their place within the broader
social configuration, since it provides the Baniwa with a monopoly over the scarce quartz
required in making the grater boards.
Control over the means of production and the social relations of production
organize the flow of goods to support existing social arrangements. Structure and
ideology gain legitimacy and force from the cumulative weight of different forms of
repetition, transformation, and layering symbolic motifs.
The grater board is polysemic: by emblemizing the Baniwa it sends a double
message of monopoly over both manufacture and place. The boulders may be fixed and
immobile, but the designs on them are said to represent ancestral texts. Copies of these
motifs may carry the power of the original -- as long as the recipients or readers of the
message recognize the intended meaning of the sender. For a conceptualized "social
structure" to succeed -- that is, reproduced over time -- the ideology and the signs
conveying it must be shared by all interacting, and interpreting, units.[This requires the
controlled interpretation of signs.]
[WHERE: boundaries, and belonging.
[One means by which the act of signification finds power is in control over the
creation of past events. Historical discourse that serves specific ideological ends renders
signs "evidentiary." Yet, as we have said, for signs to be effective, their meanings must
be recognizable.]
Since Baniwa grater boards carry the identifying symbols of group identity and
cross the boundaries of communities, they are sensitive indicators of community
dynamics. However, as we have said, Baniwa grater boards go from Baniwa insiders to
non-Baniwa outsiders. How are these outsiders, then, to interpret the intent behind the

16
Baniwa design elements? How are they to convey the propriety embodied in these
designs and their connection to an ancestral place they may not know?
In the exogamous, northwest Amazon, women move to villages of their husbands'
descent groups, where they will be followed by ongoing exchanges of crafts. Baniwa
women, whose presence as wives serves to mediate between intermarrying groups and to
provide their in-laws with Baniwa products, also serve to interpret the objects and the
designs upon them sent by their own descent groups. The women, then, socialized not to
make but to interpret the design elements, are the messengers that carry the meanings
displayed on the grater boards across community boundaries/lines.
Insofar as the economic exchange of goods-carrying-signs accompanies marriage,
the exchange involves interested and knowledgeable interpreters of the signs.
Signification, however, is limited to a community which shares a consensus regarding
meaning. In the negotiations that accompany social positioning or spatial legitimacy, the
power behind these meanings willbe contested. The degree to which symbolism is
capable of accomplishing practical goals is tested in changing historic circumstance.

Acknowledgments
I wish to thank Lee Horne, Miriam Stark, and Brenda Bowser, for organizing the
2003 American Anthropological Association Session, "Breaking Down Boundaries," in
honor of Carol Kramer, at which this paper was first presented. A broader discussion of
material exchange in the northwest Amazon (Chernela 1992) can be found in a special
volume of the Journal of Archaeological Anthropology edited by Carol Kramer.

FOOTNOTES
1.The number of groups varies according to definition of area.
2. This calculations combines data from Jackson (1976) for the Colombian
Vaupés, and CEDI (1987) for the Brazilian Uaupés.
3. I here refer to the group by the name Baniwa, the term in lingua geral, with
which the group is known in Brazil, and by/with which its members identify themselves
today. For discussions of the Baniwa, see Hill (1983, 1984) and Wright (1981), Paul

17
 Valentine (1991, 2002), Sylvia Vidal (2003). Wright worked between 1977 and 78
among the Hohodene and Wariperidakena of the Aiarí River in Brazil.

4 Members of this Northern Arawak-speaking society are organized into

exogamous, patrilineal phratries, each consisting of patrisibs. In the ideal, phratries are
localized territories, yet many groups have been displaced. Phratric groupings are linked
by marriage and trade with other Baniwa phratries and nearby Tukanoan exogamous
units. This paper focuses on the Hohodene, a Baniwa phratry located on the Aiarí, an
affluent of the Içana River in Brazil.
5. Many Hohodene have migrated to the nearby town of Sao Gabriel da Cachoeira
and to urban centers further downriver sites on the Rio Negro. I do not include them in
this analysis as they are not participants in the marriage/trade network described here.
6. Mateus Trinidade Cabral resided in my home for six months between February
and August 2004. I am greatly indebted to him for his input into this manuscript.
7. This shape bears very close resemblance to both longhouse plans and dance
masks.

REFERENCES CITED
Århem, Kaj
1981 Makuna Social Organization, Uppsala, Sweden.
1989 "The Maku, The Makuna, and the Guiana System: Transformations of Social
Structure in Northern Lowland South America," Ethnos (1-2)5-22.
Binford, Lewis R.
1972 An Archaeological Perspective. Academic Press.
2002 In Pursuit of the Past: Decoding the Archaeological Record. Berkeley: University
of California Press.
Bruzzi Alves da Silva, P. Alcionilio
1977 A Civilizaçao Indigena do Uaupés Segunda Edição. Missao Salesiana do Rio
Negro, Amazonas, Brasil.
Centro Ecumenico de Documentação e Informação (CEDI), Museu Nacional, Rio de Janeiro.
Relatorio 1987

18
Chernela, Janet M.
2003 "Language Ideology and Women’s Speech: Talking Community in the Northwest Amazon."
American Anthropologist 105(4)794-806
1993 The Wanano Indians of the Brazilian Amazon: A Sense of Space. University of Texas
Press.
1992 "Social Meanings and Material Transaction: the Wanano-Tukano of Brazil and
Colombia," Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 11:111-124.
Hill Jonathon
1983 "Wakuenai Society: A Processual-Structural Analysis of Indigenous Cultural Life in the
Upper Rio Negro Basin, Venzuela." Ph.D. dissertation, Indiana University. University
Microfilms International.
1984 Social Equality and Ritual Hierarchy: The Arawakan Wakuenai of Venezuela."
American Ethnologist 11:528-44.
Hodder, Ian
1982a The Present Past. An Introduction to anthropology for archaeologists. London:
Batsford.
1982b Symbols in Action. Ethnoarchaeological studies of material culture. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
1992 Theory and practice in archaeology (Collected Papers). London: Routledge.
Hugh-Jones, Christine
1979 From the Milk River: Spatial and Temporal Processes in Northwest Amazonia,
Cambridge University Press.
Hugh-Jones, Stephen
1979 The Palm and the Pleiades: Initiation and Cosmology in Northwest Amazonia,
Cambridge University Press.
Jackson, Jean E.
1974 "Language Identity of the Colombia Vaupés Indians," in R. Bauman and J. Sherzer,
eds., Explorations in the Ethnography of Speaking. Cambridge University Press.
1976 "Vaupés Marriage: A Network System in an Undifferentiated Lowland Area of South
America," in Regional Analysis, Vol. II: Social Systems, ed. C. Smith, pp. 65-93, New York.

19
1983 The Fish People: Linguistic Exogamy and Tukanoan Identity in Northwest Amazonia.
New York: Cambridge University Press.
Koch-Grünberg, Theodor
1995 (orig. 1909) Dos Años entre Los Indios: Viajes por el noroeste Brasileño 1903/1905.
Bogotá: Editorial Universidad Nacional. [Trans. from Zwei Jahre unter den Indianern: Reisen
in Nordwest-brasilien 1903/1905, Berlin.]
Medina, Domingo
2003 “From Keeping it Oral to Writing to Mapping: the Kuyujani Legacy and the De’kuana
Self-Demarcation Project.” In Histories and Historicities in Amazonia, ed. Neil L. Whitehead.
Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pp. 3-31.
Ribeiro, Berta G.
1980 A Civilização da Palha: A Arte do Trançado dos Indios do Brasil.
Dissertação de Doutoramento. Brazil: Universidade de Sao Paulo.
Reichel-Dolmatoff, G.
1971 Amazonian Cosmos: The Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians.
University of Chicago. Originally published 1968 as Desana, Simbolismo de los Indios Tucano
del Vaupés, Bogota, Universidad de los Andes.
Ricoeur, Paul
1991 (1986) “The Model of the Text: Meaningful Action Considered as a Text” in From Text
to Action: Essaysin Hermeneutics II, trans. Kathleen Blamey and John B. Thompson.
Evanston: Norwestern University Press.
Goldman, Irving
1963 The Cubeo: Indians of the Northwest Amazon, Illinois Studies in Anthropology,
No. 2, University of Illinois Press.
Sorensen, Arthur P., Jr.
1967 "Multilingualism in the Northwest Amazon," American Anthropologist Vol. 69, pp. 670-
684.
Stevenson, Marc
1989 "Sourdoughs and Cheechakos: the Formation of Identity-Signaling Social Groups,"
Journal of Anthropological Archaeology 8:270-312.
Valentine, Paul

20
 1991 Curripaco Social Organization: A Study in History, Kinship, and Marriage in the Upper
Rio Negro Valley. Ph.D. disertation, Pennsylvania State University.
2002 "Fathers that Never Exist: Exclusion of the Role of Shared Father among the Curripaco
of the Northwest Amazon. In Cultures of Multiple Fathers: the Theory and Practice of Partible
Paternity in Lowland South America. Gainesville: University Press of Florida. 178-191
Vidal, Sylvia
2003 “The Arawak-Speaking Groups of Northwestern Amazonia: Amerindian Cartography
as a Way of Preserving and Interpreting the Past.” In Histories and Historicities in Amazonia,
ed. Neil L. Whitehead. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Pp. 33-58.
Whitehead, Neil H.
2003 Histories and Historicities in Amazonia. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.
Wright, Robin
1981 History and Religion of the Baniwa Peoples of the Upper Rio Negro Valley, Ph.D.
dissertation, Stanford University.

21