La Alumbrera is a large archaeological site located at Antofagasta de la Sierra microregion and occupied from ca. 1100 years BP. In this paper, we examine evidence obtained from lithic artefactual samples obtained in one of its enclosures, which integrates an exceptional building with careful architecture. The combined evaluation of some of such data with that obtained from other archaeological remains surveyed in the same structure encourages to propose greater heterogeneity -than expected according to previous models- among the cultural practices of the inhabitants of the settlement, and to argument about the historical particularities of the late social, political and economic centralization process at the microregion, created and generated by people that inhabited its different places and ravines in the day-to-day reproduction of their cultural, identity, social, political and economic dispositions. Meanwhile, other data enables to hypothesize which activities were carried out by inhabitants of the enclosure, a small first step to comprehend the internal occupational complexity of La Alumbrera.
Keywords:
material practices, centralization, historical trajectory, occupational variability, late-Inka
Elías , A. M. (2022). Material practices among the inhabitants of La Alumbrera, a Pukara from Southern Argentine Puna (ca.1100-470 years BP). Revista Chilena De Antropología, (45), 1–24. https://doi.org/10.5354/0719-1472.2022.67722
