Salomon, Frank 1946-

PERSONAL:

Born April 13, 1946. Education: Columbia University, B.A. (cum laude), 1968; Cornell University, M.A., 1974, Ph.D., 1978.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin, 5240 Sewell Social Sciences Bldg., 1180 Observatory Dr., Madison, WI 53706-1393. E-mail—fsalomon@wisc.edu.

CAREER:

Anthropologist. University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and department of anthropology, visiting lecturer, 1976-78, visiting assistant professor, 1978-82; University of Wisconsin, Madison, department of anthropology, assistant professor, 1982-84, associate professor, 1984-91, professor, 1991-2006, John V. Murra professor of anthropology, 2006—, research associate, 1987-94, chair, 1991-94.

MEMBER:

American Anthropological Association, American Ethnological Society, American Society for Ethnohistory, Association for Latin American Indian Literature, Conference on Latin American History of the American Historical Association, Latin American Studies Association, Colonial Americas Study Organization.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Grant, 1979; Tinker Foundation/University of Illinois grant, 1980; Howard Francis Cline Memorial Prize of the American Historical Association, Conference on Latin American History, 1981; Fulbright Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, 1982; Project Trochos Award for development of instructional software, 1988-89; Institute for Research in the Humanities, University of Wisconsin fellowship, 1989; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for University Teachers, 1989; Vilas Associateship in the Social Sciences, University of Wisconsin, 1989-90; U.S. Department of Education, Fulbright Group Projects Abroad Grant, 1996; National Science Foundation Senior Research Grant, 1996-97; Wenner-Gren Foundation research grant, 1997; John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship, 1998-99; School of American Research Resident Fellowship, 1998-99; American Philosophical Society Franklin Research Grant, 2001; International Reading Association Elva Knight Research Grant, 2001-02; Wenner-Gren Foundation Research Grant, 2005; John Leddy Phelan Prize for Latin American Studies, 2005; Erminie Wheeler-Voegelin Prize of the American Society for Ethnohistory, 2005, for The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village; Fulbright-Hays Faculty Research Abroad Fellowship, Peru, 2005-06; National Science Foundation Senior Research Grant, 2005-07.

WRITINGS:

Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas: The Political Economy of North-Andean Chiefdoms, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1986.

(Editor, with Harald O. Skar) Natives and Neighbors in South America: Anthropological Essays, Göteborgs Etnografiska Museum (Göteborg, Sweden), 1987.

(With Manuel Mesíaas Carrera) Historia y cultura popular de Zámbiza, Centro Ecuatoriano para el Desarrollo de la Communidad (Quito, Ecuador), 1990.

Reproduccíon y transformacíon de las sociedades andinas, siglos xvi-xx: simposio auspiciado por el Social Science Research Council, SSRC, Ediciones ABYA-YALA (Quito, Ecuador), 1991.

(Translator and editor, with George L. Urioste) The Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion, University of Texas Press (Austin, TX), 1991.

(With Jorge Armando Guevara Gil) La visita personal de indios: ritual político y creación del "indio" en los andes coloniales, Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (Lima, Peru), 1996.

The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume III, South America, Part 1, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1999.

The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS:

Frank Salomon is an anthropologist who is well known for his extensive research of the Andean region of Peru. His other areas of academic interest include historical ethnology (the branch of anthropology that compares and analyzes the origins, distribution, technology, religion, language, and social structure of the ethnic, racial, and/or national divisions of humanity), literacy and ethnography of writing, religion, cultural anthropology, quechua language, and colonial Latin America. Salomon teaches courses on the Andean peoples, religion, research design and methods, and literacy at University of Wisconsin, Department of Anthropology, where he has taught since 1982. Prior to this he worked as a visiting lecturer and a visiting assistant professor at the University of Illinois, Center for Latin American and Caribbean Studies and Department of Anthropology. Salomon obtained his master's and Ph.D. from Cornell University and his B.A. from Columbia University, where he graduated with honors. He has won numerous grants, fellowships, and awards over the years for his work in the field of anthropology. In addition to his work as a researcher and professor, Salomon has authored, coauthored, edited, and translated numerous books, including Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas: The Political Economy of North-Andean Chiefdoms, Natives and Neighbors in South America: Anthropological Essays, Historia y cultura popular de Zámbiza, Reproduccíon y transformacíon de las sociedades andinas, siglos xvi-xx: simposio auspiciado por el Social Science Research Council, SSRC, The Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion, La visita personal de indios: ritual político y creacíon del "indio" en los andes coloniales, The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume III, South America, Part 1, and The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village.

Along with Stuart B. Schwartz, a historian of Brazil, Salomon edited The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume III, South America, Part 1, published in 1999. The volume takes an extensive look at the history of the indigenous societies of South America through contributions from senior scholars who come from a variety of disciplines. Some of the essays included are Izumi Shimada's piece on Andean cultural diversity and multicentrism between 500 B.C.E. and 600 C.E., and Neil Whitehead's contrast of the Caribbean islands, which were devastated by disease and settlers, with the much less impacted northern portions of South America. Both of the editors of this volume should be "congratulated on the timeliness of what appears here, for the collection is more than an invaluable reference tool. The editors and their cohort of distinguished contributors enter the fray at a scholarly moment when the possibility of finding ‘Indian’ voices and actions in the historical record seems not to be diminishing so much as extending into the study of deeply transforming, actively appropriating, but still authentically indigenous cultures," wrote Kenneth Mills in his review of the book for the Historian.

The Cord Keepers, published in 2004, centers around khipus, knotted cord devices that were used as recording tools in the Inca Empire and its predecessor societies in the Andean region of Peru. Salomon, who has extensive knowledge of the region, came upon khipus accidentally while carrying out research in the area. The villagers that he worked with while conducting his research no longer made khipus, but they still displayed them in ceremonies. Salomon recorded this use and worked extensively with the descendants of the last community members known to have engaged in khipu construction. He analyzed contemporary inscription and record-keeping in the communities as well. "Salomon's book is a milestone in Andean and comparative literacy studies. It is, first, an ethnography of khipu use and performance in a present-day community which, against all the odds, still possesses and manipulates in ceremonial contexts a set of these enigmatic knotted-string records, one (originally two) for each of its ten ayllus (patrilineal corporative groups). And the context of cultural use is precisely what has been missing from analyses of museum specimens," asserted Tristan Platt in a review of The Cord Keepers for the Journal of Latin American Studies. Platt added, "The exploration of khipu iconicity as data sets, using the insights offered by Salomon, may yet teach us (as heirs to a different mind-set) to see differently what lies before our eyes. It may turn out, to paraphrase John Murra's pregnant epigraph, that the art of the khipu is ‘not lost; it is just now being found.’" Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute reviewer Maggie Bolton felt that the author is very clear "in communicating some complex ideas from the philosophy of writing and linguistics in a very clear and accessible manner, and the book's engagement with this body of literature should make it appeal to a broad range of scholars beyond Andean specialists. … This work forms an excellent contribution both to our ethnographic and historical knowledge of the Andean region, and also more generally to theories of writing and studies of systems of inscription."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Anthropologist, March 1, 1993, Gary Urton, review of The Huarochirí Manuscript: A Testament of Ancient and Colonial Andean Religion, p. 225.

American Historical Review, April 1, 1988, Noble David Cook, review of Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas: The Political Economy of North-Andean Chiefdoms, p. 535; December 1, 2005, Zoila S. Mendoza, review of The Cord Keepers: Khipus and Cultural Life in a Peruvian Village, p. 1573.

Americas: A Quarterly Review of Inter-American Cultural History, January 1, 1993, Karen Spalding, review of The Huarochirí Manuscript, p. 398.

Choice: Current Reviews for Academic Libraries, June 1, 1992, D.L. Browman, review of The Huarochirí Manuscript, p. 1580; July 1, 2005, D.L. Brownman, review of The Cord Keepers.

Contemporary Sociology, March 1, 1988, Barbara Bradby, review of Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas, p. 167.

Ethnohistory, winter, 1989, Darrell La Lone, review of Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas, p. 98; fall, 1993, Joanne Rappaport, review of The Huarochirí Manuscript, p. 653.

Hispanic American Historical Review, May 1, 1988, Karen Spalding, review of Native Lords of Quito in the Age of the Incas, p. 363; August 1, 1994, Maria A. Benavides, review of The Huarochirí Manuscript, p. 520.

Historian, winter, 2002, Kenneth Mills, review of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume III, South America, Part 1, p. 471.

Journal of Latin American Anthropology, April 1, 2005, Shane Greene, review of The Cord Keepers, p. 237.

Journal of Latin American Studies, February 1, 2006, Tristan Platt, review of The Cord Keepers, p. 198.

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, March 1, 2006, Maggie Bolton, review of The Cord Keepers, p. 257.

Latin American Research Review, spring, 1994, David L. Browman, review of The Huarochirí Manuscript, p. 235.

Times Higher Education Supplement, July 6, 2001, Nicholas Saunders, review of The Cambridge History of the Native Peoples of the Americas, Volume III, South America, Part 1, p. 30.

ONLINE

University of Wisconsin Madison Anthropology Department Web site,http://www.anthropology.wisc.edu/ (August 16, 2008), biographical information on Frank Salomon.