Luis Tissera

Based on the analysis of distribution and variation gradients in a set of geometric motifs documented in the rock art of the Semi-arid North of Chile as “circles with parallel external appendages”, and also identified in the central Sierras de Argentina, this study explores the circulation of information through visual flows on a macroregional scale. As an approach to cultural transmission phenomena, it examines the mechanisms of iconographic replication, using various classification schemes that provide differential information, while also discussing the possible directionality involved in such long-distance processes of image selection and reproduction.

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Dagmar Bachraty Pino

This article offers a description and comparison of the garments worn by the maidens sacrificed on the Ampato, Llullaillaco and Sara-Sara volcanoes, as well as an unpublished study of the three female figurines attributed to the Ampato maiden’s funerary trousseau. By studying and comparing them, we aim to establish similarities and differences in their clothing, in order to explore, from a ethnohistorical perspective, who the sacrificed individuals were and who the accompanying female figurines represented. This will allow us to infer a significant female role within the function of a Capacocha.

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Alejandro Richard

The Archaeology of the African Diaspora emerged in the 1960s. Its interdisciplinary character has fostered dialogue with historiography, anthropology, and other social sciences across several case studies in the American continent. In this paper, I present and discuss the advances and obstacles encountered in the development of archaeological studies of the African Diaspora in Argentina, which occurred later than in other countries of the region.

Drawing on a case study from the Entre Ríos province, the article presents several lines of interdisciplinary inquiry. This approach, which opens the way to design studies that share scales, concepts, and methods across different disciplines, made it possible to overcome several of the obstacles identified. It demonstrates how this approach enriched the research carried out in the context of a heritage-making process, challenging the State’s ideological construct that sustained the “disappearance” of Afro-Argentines. Finally, the article underscores the practice of African Diaspora Archaeology as an important mediating agent in heritage processes
such as the one described, processes that link different State institutions with activism and the local Afro-descendant community.

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Jean Franco Daponte Araya, Nicole Cortés Aliaga y Alberto Díaz Araya

In the foothills of the Tarapacá Region of Chile, the Epiphany festival—also known as “Pascua de los Negros” (Black Easter)—is celebrated. As part of this festivity, twelve songs are performed, three of which allude to the enslaved Africans who once lived in this territory. Through ethnohistorical and musicological study, we address the presence of Africans and their descendants in the region, along with their respective cultural contributions to the celebration of Pascua de los Negros. This research has allowed us to delineate a sociocultural territory we call “Afro-Mestizo” and to demonstrate that imaginaries of slavery are still preserved in the collective memory. These are expressed in the lyrical, musical, and dance components of these three Epiphany songs. Despite the coercive forces exerted by Chileanization policies, as well as their current invisibilization due both to the “Andeanization” of this festival and to the spread of contemporary Afro-Chilean music—which reclaims Afro-Latin American drums and sounds—these three songs continue to be a living testimony to the presence and persistence of an identity long rendered invisible. Through music and dance, they evoke the Afro-Tarapacans and their contributions to the social history of northern Chile.

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