The Snake With Golden Braids seeks to understand how local inhabitants of the extraordinarily rugged Andean topography of Huanoquite, Peru came to understand their landscape and then build and maintain a system of irrigation ditches across it. The Huanoquiteno's original solution, a conceptually and architecturally complex irrigation system, was abandoned after the Spanish conquest of Peru, and replaced by a simpler, yet still complex, system, which is still in place today. Stephen G. Bunker combines a history of these systems with a rethinking of the local myths, legends, and environment to help make sense of the land and its uses. This book follows his intellectual and spiritual journey to learn not just about building and managing irrigation ditches, but about the very different ways of knowing the environment and the spirits of the earth that informed and empowered the original builders. Bunker's first-hand experience and research will prove an invaluable asset to sociologists, anthropologists, and environmentalists.

"Stephen Bunker provides a nuanced analysis of the social and environmental history of Andean irrigation canals and their impacts on rural landscapes and society. He skillfully weaves together how biophysical limitations, material processes, and eco-cosmology promote the production or deterioration of irrigation canals." - H-Net: Humanities and Social Science Reviews Online