Ernst Halbmayer is Professor of Social and Cultural Anthropology at the Institute for Comparative Cultural Research, University of Marburg, Germany.

PART I The Isthmo-Colombian Area in context 1 Introduction: toward an anthropological understanding of the area between the Andes, Mesoamerica, and the Amazon PART II Conceptualizing the Isthmo-Colombian Area from a regional comparative perspective 2 An Amerindian humanism: order and transformation in Chibchan universes 3 Languages of the Isthmo-Colombian Area and its southeastern borderland: Chibchan, Chocoan, Yukpa, and Wayuunaiki 4 Kinship, clanship, and hierarchy in the Isthmo-Colombian Area 5 Between Mesoamerica, the Central Andes, and Amazonia: area conceptions, chronologies, and history 6 The golden ones: the human body as reflective metallic surface in the Isthmo-Colombian Area PART III Case studies: change and continuity in shamanic and priestly practices and the conception of things, humans, plants, and animals 7 Parents who own lives: relations and persons among the I'ku, a Chibchan group in Colombia 8 Tuwancha, "the One Who Knows": specialists and specialized knowledge in transhuman communication among the Sokorpa Yukpa of the Serranía del Perijá, Colombia 9 The Wounaan haaihí jëeu n¿m ritual with the k'ugwiu: reinforcing benevolence and preventing calamity 10 Things, life, and humans in Guna Yala (Panama): talking about molagana and nudsugana inside and outside Guna society 11 Plant ontologies among the Bribri of Talamanca, Costa Rica 12 The place of livestock in human-non-human relationship among the Wayuu 13 Murderous spirits: shamanic interpretation of armed violence, suicide, and exhumation in the economy of death of the Emberá (Chocó, Antioquia, Colombia)