Property as Performance: Rites of Possession, <i>Amojonamiento</i> , and Surveying in Ollantaytambo, Peru (1550–1650)

The creation and maintenance of property is a longstanding topic of anthropological concern, especially in examinations of colonial contexts. In this paper, I draw on recent characterizations of property as a contingent and extended social process to analyze the creation of property in the Colonial Andes and the parallel dispossession of Andean communities. I focus on ritualized performances that mediated between property-as-title and land-as-possession around the town of Ollantaytambo, in Peru’s Cusco Region. By analyzing ritualized performances, rites that included tearing plants, moving stones, and monumentation, I trace the shifting ways that authority over land was conceptualized and legitimized in the region. I argue that these rites did not just reflect the landholding social order, but also created it.