Agglomeration, social practices and the building of community among hunter-gatherers
Channel: European Association of Archaeologists
Date: 2018-10-10

The Middle Holocene in the coastal Atacama Desert in what is today northern Chile witnessed a regional process of decreased residential mobility and agglomeration of marine hunter-gatherers. In this paper we analyze the historical trajectory leading from highly mobile and low demographic groups to semipermanent occupations of bigger groups in dense shellmiddens, with no evidence of significant changes in technologies. We will discuss the environmental context associated with this transformation, but will especially address the process from a social perspective, interpreting these changes as processes through which hunting-gathering-fishing bands built a sense of community and social identity through the use of space, the social practices enacted at those spaces and the deliberate differentiation with other coastal groups.

Author: salazar, diego - Universidad de Chile (Presenting author)
Co-Author: andrade, pedro - universidad de concepcion; flores, carola - Proyecto Fondecyt 1151203; olguin, laura - proyecto fondecyt 1151203; borie, cesar - proyecto fondecyt
1151203