The dance of lines: On the rythms of making petroglyphs

Abstract

One of the main routes that anthropology has taken to study the production of material culture has been the anthropology of techniques. Although different scholars had recognized several problems and elaborated proposals to overcome them, it is still possible to recognize a temporal, spatial and technical conception grounded on a modern ontology that emphasizes a metronomic, abstract and mechanical understanding of them. To overcome this problem, this article proposes introducing the idea of rhythm into the analysis of the production of material culture. In order to do so, the author first elaborates a rhythmical approach to techniques. After which, the article’s focus falls on the rhythms of making petroglyphs in Cuesta Pabellón, a rock art site located in the Limarí Valley, Chile. The results suggest that rock art production is a rhythmical practice that involves a bodily itineration along different gestures, intensities, pauses, disruptions and spatial orientations which resonate and correspond with the way people produce this element of material culture. It is argued that the production of rock art resembles a way of dancing in which the engraver, the emerging line, and the previous lines made by others enter into the process of correspondences in which rhythms play a substantial role. Keywords correspondence, dance, lines, material culture, rhythms, rock art, techniques Author biography