The Formative process as discourses of nature and culture: the case of Tarapacá, Atacama Desert (Northern Chile).

Summary

The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a critical review of the concept of Formative (ca. 2800-1000 AP) and its ontological and epistemological assumptions through our studies in Tarapacá, in the Atacama Desert (Chile). Through this case, our purpose is to complicate the notions or radical distinctions between nature and culture, farming and gathering, mobility and sedentism, among other categorizations upon which the Formative as Neolithic Revolution has been defined. The materiality that we have studied so far indicates that such divisions are not efficacious to fully grasp the complexity of this phenomenon, often imposing Western logics to non-Western historicities. As a sociohistorical process, the Formative did not represent an ideal of progress or technological development, often explained through economic transformations that presumed an "efficient" use of resources. We propose, instead, a view that underlines the inherent contradictions between individuals, society and culture, in the hope of contributing to an alternate view of these transformations.

SAA 2015 abstracts made available in tDAR courtesy of the Society for American Archaeology and Center for Digital Antiquity Collaborative Program to improve digital data in archaeology. If you are the author of this presentation you may upload your paper, poster, presentation, or associated data (up to 3 files/30MB) for free. Please visit http://www.tdar.org/SAA2015 for instructions and more information.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 80th Annual Meeting, San Francisco, CA (2015)   •
• Narratives and discourses on the Formative period: Reflections and new epistemologies from the South Central Andes

Keywords

Spatial Coverage