Nomenclature and Local Knowledge in Terraced Agriculture in the Peruvian Andes: An Intercultural Perspective

This article presents an appraisal of ideas generated by extant scientific studies and oral testimonies. The focus, nomenclature and local knowledge is a way to highlight the conceptual universe from the perspective of local people in the terms and categories they use in describing and explaining stone walls, irrigation canals, classification of soils and crops. These names convey the meaning attached to the slopes transformed into agricultural terraced landscapes in the Colca Valley in Arequipa, Peru. The acknowledgment of both sources of ideas, scientific and local, follows the purpose of creating wider horizons of understanding terraces within a process of intercultural dialogue by building epistemological bridges between knowledge systems. This is an essential step to bring about fruitful transformations of terraced agriculture in the Andes.