Why (not) Feathers? Period Hands and Material Encounters in Colonial Peru
My article on feather-work in colonial Peru shows, above all, that we should no longer differentiate between non-literate (material) Native Americans with feathers on their heads and literate Europeans with feathers in their hands. Far more important should be the historian’s distinction between non-literacy and knot literacy as this separates or connects cultures in the stories that we tell about the past.