Manuscrito
Desert Travels: Making place through movement in the Atacama Desert (ca. 1000 BC?500 AD)
Fecha
2019Institución
Resumen
Social worlds are constituted by movement. Mobility entails not only the circulation ofpeople, but also material goods, imaginaries, experiences, flows of information, andknowledge. In this paper, we examine different forms of movement in the Atacama Desertduring the Formative Period (ca. 2500
—
1500 cal BP), such as pedestrian travels,
llama
caravans, and navigation on sea lion-skin vessels along the Pacific coast, incorporatingdifferent material means and encompassing a wide array of incentives. We present differentcase studies that challenge monolithic assumptions about mobility in the South-CentralAndes, commonly understood through the lens of ecological complementarity and primarilydriven
by economic exchange. Using Binford’s classic distinction between residential and
logistical mobility in combination with the territorial categories of local and extralocal, weinterrogate the spatial and temporal scale of these journeys
—
from daily to seasonal, fromshort to long-distance. Through these examples, we approach movement and travel as a wayof life, exploring the varied ways in which it was integrated into the social lives of desertdwellers.Keywords: Mobility; Formative Period; Atacama Desert; Place-making