Alcalá View 1980 2.2

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A Woman Who Really Digs Her Work: ALANA CORDY-COLLINS

behind us, we are just now ber ning to be able to formulate intel– ligent questions." One has the impression that for Alana Cordy-Collins as well as the people she studies there is no separation of the sacred and the secular in her work. She is one of those rare and fortunate people about whom one could say "she is what she does." Engaged in re– search, curator of Latin American collections at the San Diego Museum of Man, director of the Bancroft Ranch Project, archaeology director for the Spring Valley H istor– ical Society, president of the San Diego Chapter of the Archaeological Institute of America, writer, editor, t eacher-she was hardput to answer the interviewer's cliche question about leisure activities. (" I guess about the closest I come to having a hobby is my enjoyment in taking students on study tours-that's con– nected with my work, but it'( change of pace, and I love doing it. , Does her travel and work sched– ule ever interfere with her marriage (to Jack Riesland, teacher of English for San Diego City Schools)? "Not at all. We're really lucky-Jack loves to travel, we have vacations at the same time, he's fascinated by archaeology and is the official photographer for many of my field trips, and with his background in English, he's an enormous help with my writing. In fact, we're co-editors of an anthology in progress, a reader in pre-Columbian art history." She and Jack will travel to Europe this summer to visit London and Berlin, where Alana will research significant museum collections of Chavfn pieces. Is she impatient to get back into the field, to that site on the south coast of Peru which a few years ago yielded up the only set of painted Chav1n textiles known to exist?"~· really. For one thing, there is a lol. research yet to be done, and that can continue wherever I am. And I love t each in g, especially here at USO. Everyone is so outgoi ng and frien dly. And t he students actually study!"

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by Sandra Edelman Somewhere on the south coast of Peru, 1 50 kilometers from the near– est town, lie the w ell-preserved ruins of a large village-what may prove to have been the center of culture for a preliterate Peruvian people known as the Chav,n. It is here that Alana Cordy-Collins, anthropologist, teacher, writer, editor, art historian, hopes to spend her summer in 1982 . Whether she is able to do so ultimately depends on obtaining grant funds. What she plans to do there is to push ahead her research on this seminal culture, probably the least well-known of any of the pre-Columbian civiliza– tions, and the one which most commands Alana's interest. - Places and names which to most of us are exotic are part of Alana's inheritan ce, what she calls a "genet– ic attraction": her father was an archaeologist and frequent consult– ant to the Southwest Museum, Los Angeles, specializing in Mayan cul– ture, and as a child Alana often accompanied him on his trips to the fie ld . "Act ually, I sort of migrated into an thropology from art," Alana ex– plains, "but I'm sure my early contact with the profess ion had

something to do with the direction I eventually took." Her focus on Peru, she believes, probably results from the influence of one of her profes– sors at UCLA, the institution from which she took all three of her degrees, including a 1976 doctorate in archaeology for which she wrote a dissertation on the iconography of Chav(n textiles. "Iconography-the making of images-is the area of study that excites me most, and it was my interest in the art of the Chav(n that took me into anthropology. Most anth ropologi sts today think of them– selves as 'processual' anthropolo– gists, which means they are interest– ed in t he process of the culture being investigated-and that means they look at the culture from a holistic point of view. For the Chav(n, for example, there was no separation of the sacred and the secular. Their art-primarily stone carvings but also ceramics and tex– tiles-is an expression of their reli– gion, and so by understanding the images which appear on their art– ifacts, we can come to some under– standing of their re ligion as w ell. "A lthough at this point, w ith on ly about ten years o f solid research