Cover -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- PART 1: LANGUAGES, CULTURES, AND LOCAL HISTORIES -- 1. The Arawakan Matrix: Ethos, Language, and History in Native South America -- 2. Arawak Linguistic and Cultural Identity through Time: Contact, Colonialism, and Creolization -- 3. Historical Linguistics and Its Contribution to Improving Knowledge of Arawak -- PART 2: HIERARCHY, DIASPORA, AND NEW IDENTITIES -- 4. Rethinking the Arawakan Diaspora: Hierarchy, Regionality, and the Amazonian Formative -- 5. Social Forms and Regressive History: From the Campa Cluster to the Mojos and from the Mojos to the Landscaping Terrace-Builders of the Bolivian Savanna -- 6. Piro, Apurina, and Campa: Social Dissimilation and Assimilation as Historical Processes in Southwestern Amazonia -- 7. Both Omphalos and Margin: On How the Pa'ikwene (Palikur) See Themselves to Be at the Center and on the Edge at the Same Time -- PART 3: POWER, CULTISM, AND SACRED LANDSCAPES -- 8. A New Model of the Northern Arawakan Expansion -- 9. Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Woman: Fertility Cultism and Historical Dynamics in the Upper Rio Negro Region -- 10. Secret Religious Cults and Political Leadership: Multiethnic Confederacies from Northwestern Amazonia -- 11. Porphetic Traditions among the Baniwa and Other Arawakan Peoples of the Northwest Amazon -- References Cited -- Contributors -- Index.