'Neolithic Nostalgia'? Temporalities and Interrelations of Agropastoral and Industrial Spaces in Ollagüe, Northern Chile

Summary

This is an abstract from the session entitled "Co-Producing Space: Relational Approaches to Agrarian Landscapes, Labor, Commodities, and Communities", at the 2024 annual meeting of the Society for Historical Archaeology.

In Ollagüe, a Quechua Indigenous community in northern Chile, abandoned agropastoral and industrial sites exist alongside each other as witnesses of the complex nuances of capitalist expansion and industrializing projects. Sulfur and borax mining modified agricultural landscapes by extracting its resources, such as yareta, an almost exterminated plant used as fuel for mining furnaces. This paper examines the role of industries in Ollagüe's recent history and the degree of material ties between industrial sites and agropastoral places, formerly essential to feeding miners and workers. Today, while industrial sites remain abandoned and ruined, agropastoral places are inserted into new heritage preservation discourses as part of a traditional landscape that the local community seeks to preserve. By questioning old assumptions of what Alfred Métraux called the 'neolithic nostalgia', the complex relationship between agropastoral and industrial sites shows the role of the Ollagüe community's current efforts to preserve its historical memory and identity.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for Historical Archaeology 2024   •
• Co-Producing Space: Relational Approaches to Agrarian Landscapes, Labor, Commodities, and Communities

Keywords

Individual & Institutional Roles

Contact(s): Nicole Haddow