Alfarería, textiles y la integración del Norte Grande de Chile a Tiwanaku

Abstract

Ceramics, Textiles and the Tiwanaku Integration of Chile's "Norte Grande"

In this paper we explore Tiwanaku's iconography of power and its role in integrating south-central Andean frontier areas such as the Azapa Valley and oasis of San Pedro de Atacama, in northern Chile. It is presumed that Tiwanaku's expansive processes, like the powers that maintained its central hierarchy and the strategies that integrated peripheral and ultra-peripheral areas with the center, were ideological and political. This ideological and political nature was expressed materially in the stone sculptures of Tiwanaku, and widely distributed in portable art objects that generated and integrated Tiwanaku's interaction sphere. This idea motivates a reexamination of collections from the nuclear and peripheral areas, including the extreme south of Peru, south-central Bolivia, and northern Chile. Focusing on Chile's Azapa Valley, and San Pedro de Atacama, the authors seek to determine from iconography and artifacts the degree of integration between center and periphery, in hegemonic and territorial terms.