Browsing by Author "Ballester, Benjamin"

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    Nautical mythologies of Atacama: the caballito de totora of Jean-Christian Spahni
    (2022) Ballester, Benjamin; Cabello, Gloria
    A totora reed raft has appeared repeatedly in Chilean archaeology since 1967. Over time, as bi-ography after biography of Jean-Christian Spahni invented a new object based on the original piece -each different from its predecessor -the supposed miniature raft became accepted as irrefutable evidence of these vessels' antiquity and pre-Hispanic navigation in northern Chile and even the Andes. A recent study at the Musee d'ethnographie de Geneve in Switzerland revealed that the object is not a raft but a bundle of vegetable fibers. Common in the funerary contexts of the Formative period in northern Chile, this type of artifact is described as paint-brushes, brushes, combs or packs of raw materials. Jean-Christian Spahni's initial confusion and his biographers' reproductions are inputs for discussing how we construct archaeological evidence and write accounts in prehistory.
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    Polychromy in the Atacama Desert during the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1450 AD): pigments characterization by XRF and VNIR hyperspectral images
    (2023) Sepulveda, Marcela; Ballester, Benjamin; Cabello, Gloria; Gutierrez, Sebastian; Walter, Philippe
    The prehistory of the Atacama Desert in northern Chile has been constructed around certain traditional classes of objects, such as ceramics and lithics, following the Old World and North American standards. As such, color has been relegated to an invisible status, despite its essential visible qualities and color's importance in the region's social, symbolic, economic, and political processes. This article focuses on color and polychromy by studying objects from different funerary sites associated with the end of the regional pre-Columbian chronological sequence (ca. 1000-1500 AD). We present descriptions of the iconography and the symmetry of the motifs of these objects, and the first physicochemical characterization of the mineral paintings obtained using X-ray fluorescence spectrometry and hyperspectral imaging. With four new radiocarbon dates, we establish their chronology, associated in two cases with isotope measurements to evaluate the origin of the leather used. The research reveals a dual and simultaneous practice: while painted motifs demonstrated a visible interregional flow of information, paintings' chemical analysis testifies to a pigment production probably associated with the local exploitation of mineral coloring matter. In contrasting visual and material productions, we explore mineral pigments' social value and role during the late Atacama pre-Columbian period. Using an interdisciplinary approach regarding the materiality of color, we subsequently evaluate the social implications of mineral polychromy in this south-central Andean region.
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    The ways of fish beyond the sea: fish circulation and consumption in the Atacama desert, northern Chile, during the Formative period (500 cal BC-700 cal AD.)
    (2019) Ballester, Benjamin; Calas, Elisa; Labarca, Rafael; Pestle, William; Gallardo, Francisco; Castillo, Claudia; Pimentel, Gonzalo; Oyarzo, Cristobal
    Along the Atacama Desert coast, fish has always been a staple food and by the Formative period (500 cal B.C.-700 cal A.D.) it had become a product in high demand by the inhabitants of the inland valleys, oases and ravines of the desert. In this paper we explore the technologies used in coastal fishing activities, the diverse species caught, and fish processing and preserving techniques. We further examine the circulation routes of the product through the desert and associated strategies, the agents involved in transporting it and consumption levels in inland villages. Our study employs a multivariate analysis that includes evidence from zooarchaeology, stable isotope analysis of deceased individuals, and the composition of human coprolites, all of which were recovered from domestic waste, funerary contexts, and rest stops associated with the circulation routes running between the coast and the inland desert regions. Our results suggest that in this ancient social context, food was not only used to quell hunger, but through its associated economic cycles of production, circulation and consumption, was part of a complex and extended web of social relations. Within that network, food functioned as material culture, and as such enabled social distinctions to emerge within local groups and cultural negotiations to be conducted among different localities. Fish circulation and consumption played an active role in the reproduction of a social structure characterized by dose and firm ties between marine hunter-fisher-gatherers and agropastoral communities, despite their long distance from each other.
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    Yendegaia Rockshelter, the First Rock Art Site on Tierra del Fuego Island and Social Interaction in Southern Patagonia (South America)
    (2023) Gallardo, Francisco; Cabello, Gloria; Sepulveda, Marcela; Ballester, Benjamin; Fiore, Danae; Prieto, Alfredo
    Through our research at Bahia Yendegaia on the Beagle Channel in southernmost Patagonia-the ancestral territory of the Yagan people-we discovered the first rock art site on Tierra del Fuego Island. The geometric visual images found at Yendegaia Rockshelter present motifs and compositions analogous to those recorded at other sites on the southern archipelago associated with the marine hunter-gatherer tradition. They also show graphic similarities to the rock art paintings attributed to terrestrial hunter-gatherer populations from the Pali Aike volcanic field, located on the north side of the Strait of Magellan in mainland Patagonia. Both, however, display quantitative differences, which suggest that they emerged from different visual traditions but from the same field of graphic solutions. Navigational technology enabled the canoe-faring Fuegian people to have long-distance mobility and to maintain a flow of social information mediated via visual imagery expressed in material forms, such as rock art and expressions of portable art. Ethnohistoric reports suggest a cooperative social interaction more than a competitive one. This cooperative social dynamic would have been necessary for the survival of marine societies in the harsh environmental conditions characteristic of the southern part of south Patagonia.