Tools & tillage: a journal on the history of the implements of cultivation and other agricultural processes (7.1992/1995)

TOOLS & TILLAGE VII 2-3 1993-1994

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drawings and maps. Photographs taken by Axel
Steensberg are of a high standard. The printing is
impeccable and the quality of paper used deserves
mention.
Fire Clearance Husbandry carefully takes the
reader to the world of phased “annuals” in a
“mono-culture” regime from the “perennials” of
“polyculture” regime (compare Jackson 1991:52).
Axel Steensberg’s efforts and hard work will be
remembered by those who value scholarship.
References Cited: W.Jackson: Nature as the
Measure for a Sustainable agriculture, in:
F. H. Bormann and S. R. Kellert (eds.) Ecology,
Economics, Ethics. New Haven: Yale University
Press 1991 p. 43-58.
K. Paddayya: Ash Mound Investigations at Bu-
dihal. Gulbarga District, Karnatake, in: Man and
Environment. 1993 p. 18, 57-88.
Vijneshu Mohan
Kurukshetra, India
INGE SCHJELLERUP: Children of the Stones.
Hijos de lapiedras. A Report on the Agriculture in
Chuquibamba, A District in North-Eastern Peru.
Publication No 7 The Royal Danish Academy of
Sciences and Letters’ Commission for Research on
the History of Agricultural Implements and Field
Structures. 96 pp. Copenhagen 1989. ISBN 87-
983169-0-7. Price 150 DKK.
Danish ethnographer Inge Schjellerup has docu-
mented in this monograph the agricultural live-
lihood of Andean peasants in the District of Chu-
quibamba in the Department of Amazonas, Peru.
Field research began in 1979 with subsequent trips
made back there as recently as 1985. Most of this
jurisdiction of about 2000 people is still inacces-
sible by four-wheeled vehicles. Without ready
market access, the local economy is focused on
small-scale food production for home consump-
tion. Interviews were conducted in the main vil-
lage of Chuquibamba and two of the eight out-
lying hamlets of the district. The culture of these
peasants embodies a mixture of indigenous and
colonial Spanish folkways. Native American crops
still dominate, but the oxen-pulled Mediterranean
ard-plough has replaced the Andean foot-plough.
Unilingual Spanish-speakers, they nevertheless
have a way of life strongly influenced by a pre-

Columbian heritage. Chuquibambinos identify
themselves as “campesino”; the term “Indian” is
appropriately not used in this report to describe
them.
Hon. prof. Schjellerup places this area into a
larger context of the prehistoric and colonial past,
environment, and population. The three life-zone
divisions range from a cold puna habitat as high as
4300 m elevation down through a basically tem-
perate climate in which the main village is located,
and into the hot tropics below 900 m elevation.
Unlike in the past when the same farmers and her-
ders used land at different elevations, people now
generally use one or another zone within this ex-
traordinary verticality and then barter their prod-
ucts with those occupying the other environmen-
tal zones. Soils in each of these zones were ana-
lyzed for their nutrient content and texture. Their
stony character inspired the English title of this
book which, in turn, is derived from the expres-
sion that local people use for themselves. “Hijos
de la piedra” is the chuquibambinos" own meta-
phor to characterize their impoverished condition
that offers little hope for betterment.
Presentation of contemporary agricultural pat-
terns is organized into land tenure, land use, ani-
mal husbandry, tools, field practices, crop enemies
and agricultural customs. A chapter on exchange
focuses on how the three major zones are bound
together by trading and selling products of each
environmental zone at fiestas and markets. Slipped
into a especially helpful appendix are data from 44
households in three different communities on crop
yields, family size, number of fields, animals kept,
sources of income and kinds and number of agri-
cultural tools. This information can stimulate the
formulation of additional questions not posed in
the report, such as why households in the same
community differ in their tool inventories. The
wide net cast in Dr. Schjellerup’s interview sche-
dule provides a confident foundation for the gen-
eralizations proffered.
Given the fine-grained data base, one might
have expected in the conclusion a more analytic
discussion on exactly why and how these folk
have successfully adapted to their mountain hab-
itat. Instead, the last chapter focuses on the trends
underway that include more settlement at lower