The art of making images. Technological affordance, design variability and labour organization in the production of engraved artefacts and body paintings in Tierra del Fuego (Southern South America)

FIORE, DANAE

Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory

Springer

Año: 2020

1072-5369

Thispaper contributes to the conception of visual art as a material cultureartefact produced through a work process. Art-making work processes condense economic factors (raw material exploitation,labour organization, etc.), technologicalfactors (materials, tools, techniques, etc.) and cognitive factors (knowledge, values, visual perceptions, etc.),all of which are inextricably linked in the creation of visual images. Thepaper argues that the analysis of such work process is a key element inunderstanding and interpreting the role of visual images within the socialcontexts in which they were made and used (displayed/worn, viewed), insofar as manyof their functions, meanings and effects, stemmed from such production contextsand from the different affordances of image-making techniques. These conceptsare applied to the research of the body paintings created and worn by theYamana/Yagan, whose ancestral territory is located in the southernmost regionof Tierra del Fuego, where traditions of bone artefact decoration and pigmentuse have been documented along several millennia. Body painting is analysed usinga ?visual archaeology? approach, through the systematic study of a photographicrecord of 76 images taken in the late 19th and early 20thcenturies, combined with information from the written record (50historical-ethnographic sources from the 17th to the 20thcenturies, which are summarized for the first time in this publication).Results show that: a) the affordance of image-making techniques was flexibly exploitedin order to generate design repertoires of higher or lower variabilityaccording to the type of situation of body painting display, and b) part of thevisual and social effects of these images stemmed directly from theirproduction contexts (e.g. domestic vs. ceremonial, public vs. secret) andaffordances. Thus, the paper shows that art images-objects should not be interpretedonly as final products, since many of their material and social qualities weredeeply rooted in the very production processes that led to their existence. Nota: el presente trabajo fue procesado por los editores regulares del JAMT, fue evaluado por cuatro pares externos anónimos y no forma parte de un conjunto de ponencias.