| The central goal of this dissertation is to better understand relationships between language loss, especially of toponyms, and changes in production ecology in the Callejon de Huaylas of highland Peru. I studied Quechua-speaking farmers in small hamlets outside the city of Huaraz. Until recently, the relationship between language use and environmental change has been given little attention. I designed a study aimed at bridging that gap in a comparison of topics such as toponymic knowledge, language use, farming and husbandry practices, environmental change and globalization. I have tried to make a modest contribution to the study of interrelated changes in an indigenous community.; Fieldwork in the region featured three phases to understand various aspects of this traditional culture undergoing rapid change. In Phase I, I mapped households in the research region and then organized randomized surveys on demographics, language use, garden and husbandry data, and societal issues. Phase II involved a large mapping project (GIS and GPS) of farms, waterways, roads, and riverine plants, and showed that my "production ecology zones" featured different crops and land use patterns depending on distance from transit roads. Phase III investigated traditional toponymic knowledge and its correlation with agricultural change underway in the valley.; The main results of my work depend on a comparison of two survey groups, one near to transport roads and one farther from transport roads. The data show that the group nearer to the road and market values indigenous language less, and speaks it less frequently, than the group farther from the road and market, and that these changes correlate with cropping patterns that also favor commercial (rather than subsistence) crops near the road. These two forms of change---one in language, one in agricultural ecology---re closely related in space and time. The declining use of traditional Quechua toponymy in the region correlates with a more general loss of traditional environmental knowledge. |
