Testing the social aggregation hypothesis for Llolleo communities in Central Chile with NAA of ceramic smoking pipes and drinking jars

Summary

La Granja site in central Chile has been considered a social aggregation site for Llolleo communities based on an unusually large smoking pipe assemblage, ritual features and an abundance of drinking jars. The hypothesis states that people from a wide region gathered here for group cohesion purposes mediated by rituals involving the smoking of psychoactive substances and drinking of fermented beverages. Based on the potential of NAA to fingerprint ceramic artifacts’ raw material sources, we tested if ceramic smoking pipes and pottery found in La Granja showed chemical groupings that support the idea that people traveled from several communities with their utensils to this site. Our results show that smoking pipes and their associated pottery have similar mineralogical characteristics and that the whole sample is organized in only two chemical groups that likely represent the clay production sources for these artifacts. Our conclusion is that, if pipes and pottery are used as a proxy for the circulation of people, social networks might have been more restricted in the Llolleo social system than previously thought. Apparently La Granja, though a primary center for group activities, might not be functioning on a regional and supra-regional basis.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Ceramics of the Indigenous Peoples of South America: Studies of Production and Exchange using INAA

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Spatial Coverage