Ethnoarchaeological “calibration” of the archaeological record: Hain ritual and Selknam identity.

BOGDANOVIC I; MANSUR M. E.; PIQUÉ R.

Ethnoarchaeologia. Come ricerca di campo

B.A.R.,

Año: 2011;

The archaeological record is a new reality, in which we cannot find remains of subjective stances of past communities. One of these subjective stances per excellence is the group identity. The critical use of ethnographical record as a valuable resource for this kind of information is the fundamental element of the research project concerning hunter-gatherer communities at the inland of the Tierra del Fuego. Archaeological research revealed a ceremonial site at the Ewan Valley. There two different structures were excavated (Ewan I and II); they were interpreted as a ritual hut and a domestic unit respectively, corresponding to celebration of the selknam ritual of “Hain”. The Hain was practiced by Selknam people and it was an expression of their cosmology and their origin myth. Detailed information about this ritual was provided by ethnographers who witnessed the last decades of indigenous groups life in this part of the world. In this paper, we will contrast the archaeological record of the Ewan site against available ethnographic information, in order to define a role of “Hain” in the self-perception of Selknam community and to find out eventual material patterns of their distinction from contemporary “others”.