“Desobediencia es habitar la revuelta” (Grafiti, Santiago de Chile, noviembre 2019)

The Chilean social uprising of October 2019 led to intense, massive protests against the abuses people experienced under the modern neoliberal system. Several everyday artifacts and technologies became part of the protests. Santiago was constantly transformed at a vertiginous rate by ephemeral events that left low-permanence material traces. Part of the graffiti, flags, sculptures, and clothing alluded to Pre-Hispanic populations bearing witness to an apparent transversal solidarity to denounce the temporal depth of abuses against Indigenous peoples that continue to exist. Drawing on this social and political contingency, I identify some traits that contribute to the long-term Pre-Columbian art/archaeology debate explored in this special issue

The Art of Archaeology: The Archaeological Process in the Work of Robert Smithson, Mark Dion, and Fred Wilson

This dissertation discusses the relationship between contemporary artwork and current archaeological theory and practice. I argue that contemporary art and scientific archaeology are both practices conducted in the present facing similar issues, such as the need to attend to power relations between past and present, and the documentation and representation of ephemeral activities. Because artists and archaeologists offer different responses to those similar issues, contemporary artwork can help materialize the very process of doing and theorizing archaeology by making its contradictions and modus operandi visible. I focus on both the social context and the circulation and reception of the work of American artists Robert Smithson, Mark Dion, and Fred Wilson. The specific artworks in question are all ephemeral, site-specific installations that have been recorded through photographs. Although Smithson, Dion, and Wilson do not intend to comment theoretically on archaeological practice, the nature of their own creative process reproduces archaeology's dynamics posing metaphors that resonate with postprocessual archaeologies, particularly with the practice of British archaeologists Michael Shanks and Christopher Tilley. I propose that the basis of the resonance between the work of the artists and the archaeologists' stems from their ability to blur the boundaries of each discipline. The work of Robert Smithson, Mark Dion, and Fred Wilson has only been partially compared with archaeological practice. This dissertation underscores how artists and archaeologists rethought their fields after the advent of postmodernism, as well as to what extent, and why, those redefinitions are similar. Furthermore, I demonstrate how the groundbreaking work of Smithson in the late 1960s not only was influential to later generations of artists such as Dion and Wilson, but also seemed to anticipate by over ten years many postulates of archaeology's own self-critique

Arqueología del Cantón El Toco. Trasladando la frontera de lo visible a partir de los estudios de impacto ambiental

The archaeology of nitrate exploitation during the 19th and 20th Centuries has developed in northern Chile during the last 15 years, “making visible” a series of materiality, agents, practices and/or social processes that are difficult to identify or little investigated in historiographic research, and thus contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the nitrate cycle in the current north of Chile. The renewed interest that nitrate archaeology has aroused in the Antofagasta region in the last 20 years originates from environmental impact studies in the El Toco canton that opened important lines of research on settlement patterns in the nitrate cantons which identified the complex and dynamic social practices that occurred on the margins of the nitrate offices and productive nodes. In the present work we intend to synthesize the information generated from the archaeology of environmental impact in the Commune of María Elena, updating and complementing the archaeological information available on the archaeology of saltpetre in the El Toco canton to contribute to the understanding of nitrate cantons in current northern Chile as complex, dynamic and diverse phenomena.La arqueología del salitre desarrollada en los últimos 15 años ha contribuido a “hacer visibles” una serie de materialidades, agentes, prácticas y/o procesos sociales difíciles de identificar o poco investigados desde la documentación escrita, contribuyendo a la investigación histórica en búsqueda de una comprensión integral del ciclo salitrero en el actual norte de Chile. El renovado interés que ha despertado la arqueología salitrera en la actual región de Antofagasta en estos últimos 20 años se origina en estudios de impacto ambiental en el cantón El Toco que abrieron importantes líneas de investigación sobre el patrón de asentamiento en los cantones salitreros y lograron identificar las complejas y dinámicas prácticas sociales ocurridas en los márgenes de las oficinas salitreras y los nodos productivos. En el presente trabajo nos proponemos sintetizar la información generada a partir de la arqueología de impacto ambiental en la Comuna de María Elena, actualizando y complementando la información arqueológica disponible sobre la arqueología del salitre en el cantón El Toco con el objeto de aportar a comprender los cantones salitreros del actual norte de Chile como fenómenos complejos, dinámicos y diversos

La arqueología de la minería en el Centro-Sur Andino: balance y perspectivas

Este artículo revisa las principales investigaciones que se han publicado sobre minería desde una perspectiva arqueológica en los Andes Centro-Sur, privilegiando los trabajos realizados en Chile. Los autores hacen un recuento de las temáticas tratadas y los enfoques empleados, para posteriormente discutir acerca del potencial de futuras investigaciones

From herders to wage laborers and back again: engaging with capitalism in the Atacama Puna region of northern Chile

Towards the end of the nineteenth century, indigenous Atacameo society transited from an agro-pastoralist to a more diversified capitalist-based economy due to a growing mining industry in northern Chile. The puna herders engaged in the new capitalist order as wage laborers in sulfur mines and llareta (Azorella compacta) exploitation companies. In this article we show how indigenous knowledge acted as cultural capital that enabled the herders to work as laborers. This operation led to horizontal treatment among the different agents in the taskscape that those "herder-laborers" inhabited, including those incorporated by industrial capitalism.FONDECYT 112008

Grabados y pinturas del arte rupestre tardío de Caspana

Este es un estudio exploratorio que trata el problema del Inca en la cuenca superior del río Loa a través del arte rupestre detectado en varios sitios del Período Tardío de Caspana, con singular referencia a las expresiones presentes o asociadas a las instalaciones incaicas. De este modo, se define una iconografía que sería propia del Horizonte Tardío y que tendría connotaciones especialmente simbólicas en las estrategias del Tawantinsuyu para relacionarse con la población local.AbstractThis is a exploratory study about the Inca problematic in the upper basin of the Loa river base on rupestrine art detected in some Late Period sites of Caspana, with singular reference to the expressions present or asociate at inca installations. In this way, it define a Late Horizon iconografy, with simbolic connotations for the Tawantinsuyu strategies to relate with local people

Grabados y pinturas del arte rupestre tardío de Caspana

Este es un estudio exploratorio que trata el problema del Inca en la cuenca superior del río Loa a través del arte rupestre detectado en varios sitios del Período Tardío de Caspana, con singular referencia a las expresiones presentes o asociadas a las instalaciones incaicas. De este modo, se define una iconografía que sería propia del Horizonte Tardío y que tendría connotaciones especialmente simbólicas en las estrategias del Tawantinsuyu para relacionarse con la población local.AbstractThis is a exploratory study about the Inca problematic in the upper basin of the Loa river base on rupestrine art detected in some Late Period sites of Caspana, with singular reference to the expressions present or asociate at inca installations. In this way, it define a Late Horizon iconografy, with simbolic connotations for the Tawantinsuyu strategies to relate with local people