Imágenes, presencias, memorias. Genealogía y geografía en la piedra durante el primer milenio D. C.

LAZZARI, MARISA; GARCÍA AZCÁRATE, JORGELINA; M. CRISTINA SCATTOLIN

Crónicas materiales precolombinas. Arqueología de los primeros poblados del NO Argentino

Sociedad Argentina de Antropología

Lugar: Buenos Aires; Año: 2015; p. 603 - 633

This paper explores the social and symbolic roles of stone artifacts that emergedalong with the growing importance of settled life in NW Argentina. We discussthese artefacts as part of a lineage of ancestral practices that characterized thesouth-central Andes in the early centuries of the Era. Starting from the widelydiscussed ancestral roles of the Tafí del Valle monoliths, we look into them aspowerful presences, whose power emanated not only from their physical andsensory properties, or from their figurative designs, but also from the socialpractices that linked them with various other objects and places. Followingwidely studied Andean concepts of vital force and ancestral manifestation, thepaper explores what we call ?ancestral practices? in this period. Integrating theresults of different lines of inquiry traditionally considered separately, we discussthe available information on these artefacts and their contexts. We propose analternative interpretative framework that considers a wider ?system of stone?that included the monoliths and other figurative stone artefacts as well as otherstone artefacts traditionally considered utilitarian.