FOREWORD 
By JuLtan H. STEWARD 
The Institute of Social Anthropology, which is 
supported through the Department of State’s 
Interdepartmental Committee on Scientific and 
Cultural Cooperation, collaborates with institu- 
tions of other governments to train young scien- 
tists in anthropology and to carry out scientific 
field investigations of the cultures of contempo- 
rary peoples. The results of these investigations 
are published in order to (1) afford a corpus of 
data which will further the scientific analysis and 
comprehension of the rapid-moving and complex 
trends of modern culture change among what are 
generally described as peoples with a “folk cul- 
ture’; and (2) provide information which will 
help persons with administrative responsibility 
understand the social and cultural phenomena 
with which they must deal. 
In Peru, the Institute of Social Anthropology, 
in cooperation with the Ministry of Education and 
through it with the Instituto de Estudios Etnolé- 
gicos, planned a long-range program of studies of 
the large native population. Everywhere the 
field is rich, but the Southern Highlands, having : 
stronely Indian culture, had already attracted a 
number of scientists. As Central Peru had re- 
ceived very little attention, it was decided that 
the first phase of the field investigation should be 
devoted to it. The program called for studies of 
representative communities of the largely Euro- 
peanized coast, the strongly Quechua or Indian 
Highlands, and the mixed peoples of the Montana, 
that is, the eastern slopes of the Andes. 
On the Coast, Moche, a community situated 
near Trujillo, was studied by Dr. John Gillin. 
Moche is one of the few surviving Coastal com- 
munities that are still thought of as Indian. The 
study has appeared as Publication No. 3 of the 
Institute of Social Anthropology. 
The Central Highlands, though more strongly 
Indian than the Coast, is really quite mixed and 
varied culturally. European influence has intro- 
duced the hacienda type of land ownership and 
land use alongside the native Indian type, it has 
IV 
brought roads and railroads which have enhanced 
commerce, and it has established intensive min- 
ing operations which have transformed native life. 
Many other influences have followed these eco- 
nomic developments. The communities are in a 
state of change, but they vary considerably ac- 
cording to the local conditions and_ historical 
events. The problem, therefore, was to find a 
community representative of the general area, so 
that its culture and the typical processes of change 
might be studied in detail. This could be accom- 
plished only by making a preliminary survey of 
the Central Andes to ascertain the range of com- 
munity types and to place these types in historical 
and cultural perspective. 
The present paper gives the results of the survey. 
It was found that the Indians everywhere are 
being gradually assimilated to national Peruvian 
culture, though the rate of assimilation and par- 
ticular features of it vary locally. The process by 
which an Indian acquires a Mestizo culture and the 
Mestizo a White culture was best shown in Sicaya, 
which was consequently selected for intensive 
study and will be described in a future mono- 
graph prepared jointly by the collaborating 
anthropologists of the Instituto de Estudios 
Etnolégicos and the Institute of Social Anthro- 
pology. 
The procedure of making a general survey be- 
fore selecting a community for intensive study is 
somewhat new in anthropology. Though tradi- 
tionally concerned with the history of culture as 
expressed in tribes and culture areas, anthropology 
has tended to reject these interests when dealing 
with contemporary folk cultures and to adopt the 
sociologist’s technique of studying individual 
communities, as if each were an isolated, self-con- 
tained, and even historyless society. In the case 
of Euro-White communities, such as those in the 
United States, both the scientist and the reader 
participate in, understand, and know much about 
the cultural background and history of the com- 
munity studied. Even here, however, the ten- 
