Geoglyphs are widely seen as an expression of past sacred landscapes. In this article, I offer a new theoretical approach to geoglyphs, interpreting them as a distinctly anarchic and decentralized medium for ritual activity. When we define geoglyphs as large-scale images, and exclude other phenomena such as earthworks, it is clear that their occurrence is actually quite limited in space and time. Almost all known examples of geoglyphs are located in the Americas, and they are particularly associated with ‘middle-range’ societies, rather than states or empires. Geoglyphs produced by hunter-gatherer communities are also comparatively rare. I regard this pattern as a direct consequence of the anarchist affordances of the geoglyph medium. In agricultural societies where regional integration and incipient centralization were taking place (e.g. the ancient Nasca), geoglyphs provided a decentralizing counterbalance. I therefore theorize the incorporation of geoglyph-based ritual practices as a historically situated process of constitutional reform, whereby ancient peoples consciously sought to redistribute power and authority.

中文翻译：

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地理标志作为无政府主义仪式的媒介

Geoglyphs被广泛视为过去神圣景观的表达。在本文中，我提供了一种新的地理符号理论方法，将它们解释为一种明显的无政府主义和分散的仪式活动媒介。当我们将地理标志定义为大尺度图像，并排除土方工程等其他现象时，很明显它们的出现实际上在空间和时间上是非常有限的。几乎所有已知的地理符号示例都位于美洲，它们与“中等”社会特别相关，而不是国家或帝国。狩猎采集社区制作的地理标志也比较少见。我认为这种模式是地理标志媒介的无政府主义可供性的直接结果。在区域一体化和初期集中化正在发生的农业社会中（例如 古代纳斯卡），地理标志提供了分散的平衡。因此，我将基于地理标志的仪式实践作为一个历史性的宪法改革过程进行了理论化，古代人民有意识地寻求重新分配权力和权威。