Introduction: Andeans Articulating Colonial Worlds

Whether they be the painted walls and highly ‘dressed’ altars of Andean churches, or the collective knotted strings and litigation proceedings housed in locked chests in local Indian municipal councils, artifacts conjure up cultural interstices instrumental for discerning the “fine grain” of Spanish colonialism in the Andes. After the early years of the Spanish presence, the Andes became a mosaic of multifarious articulations of indigenous, European, and African ways of thinking, living, and weaving a social order that continued to change over time and across the geographical space of the viceroyalty of Peru.