A social landscape without a centre: the circulation of artefacts, materials and skills in ancient NW Argentina

MARISA LAZZARI Y LUCAS PEREYRA DOMINGORENA

Londres

Seminario; South American Archaeology Seminar; 2013

The Institute of Archaeology, UCL

research in the south-central Andes. Drawing on archaeological, petrographic and geochemical analysis of pottery and stone tools, this presentation will present new evidence and introduce a framework to investigate the complexities and nuance of pre-Hispanic socioeconomic interaction. The presentation will focus on sites and materials from southern Calchaquí valley of north western Argentina (NWA) during the first millennium AD, a time when sedentary communities became increasingly linked across the landscape through the use and exchange of variety of resources. While much remains to be knows in the study area for the period in question, these results allows for a confident discussion of some of the key assumptions that underlie the study of pre-Hispanic interaction in the NW Argentina, where it has been long accepted that certain areas had a more prominent nodal role in regional networks. Focusing on often assumed "marginal" areas, the presentation will discuss the diverse paths followed by artefacts, raw materials and techniques of manufactures arguing that these practices reveal a more fluid and less bounded social word than it has been previously considered.