No abstract

Technology has been a central theme in archaeological discussion. Different approaches have been developed in order to understand and better explain the processes that lead to the production of objects and things. The anthropology of technology has been one such effort, with its focus on technological style and the chaîne opératoire. In this paper we argue that, despite their many contributions, these approaches tend to isolate the process of production, as well as to see it as the imposition of culture over nature. Instead, we propose a relational approach to technology, one that considers the multiple participants in the social actions involved, stressing the affective qualities of the different entities participating in the process of making. We focus this discussion on the production process of rock art in North Central Chile by Diaguita communities (c. ad 1000–c. 1540), arguing that making petroglyphs was a central activity that aimed at the balancing of the world and its participants, creating a mediating space that facilitated connectedness between the multiple members of the Diaguita world, humans and other-than-humans.

Central and South America is a vast region, where a wide range of different societies established, transformed, disappeared, and endured. This kaleidoscope of peoples offers a particularly rich and diverse body of rock art in terms of its historical, technical, visual, and spatial features. The first sections of this chapter briefly introduces the reader to this diversity, as well as to the history of rock art research, presenting and discussing the different theoretical and methodological frameworks used. The authors discuss the role that rock art played—and still plays—for different groups, which they have grouped in terms of their common socioeconomic strategies. The authors argue that rock art research from this region can contribute to the wider understanding of rock art in the world, offering its materialistic and archaeological approaches ranging from the study of social complexity, the domestication of animals, mobility, and memory.

En este artículo se cuestionan las categorías utilizadas hasta ahora para estudiar las estatuillas de madera producidas en Rapa Nui antes e inmediatamente después del contacto con Europa (1722), con el fin de visibilizar un conjunto de objetos que no cumplen con los estándares normativos de dichas categorías. Utilizando una perspectiva metodológica basada en la teoría queer, así como enfoques relacionales, se indaga en las formas en las que este diverso conjunto de cuerpos en madera puede dar cuenta de la manera en que la población rapanuí pre-contacto conceptualizó sus propios cuerpos, y, de manera más general, su mundo. Así, los cuerpos de madera sugieren una fluidez de cualidades que hace difícil la aplicación de modelos cartesianos rígidos sobre el cuerpo y los objetos, a la vez que apuntan a un mundo construido sobre la combinación de atributos y cualidades.