Atacama (ethnos group)

The Indian Atacamas (car-naming Lickan-antay in their language, the kunza, which can result in the inhabitants of the territory ), also called Alpatamas , Kunzas , Likan-antai or Likanantaí , is an indigenous ethnos group of South America which lived the interior of the desert of Atacama (Northern of the Chile and the Argentine and south-west of the Bolivia), since the neighborhoods of the course of the Río leasing in north (IIème Chilean area of Antofagasta), until Copiapó in the south. They occupied the ravines and the valleys of this desert, as well as the sides of the Andes cordillera, including all the southernmost Puna or Puna de Atacama.

The Atacama people

It was people of farmers and stockbreeders (breeding of Camélidé S) who succeeds in using the very thin water resources of the place to obtain abundant harvests. Just as the Quechua S, they created a farming system in terraces, with an aim of preventing water descending and from avoiding the pulling up of the organic and fertile layer of the sol.
Their cultures were varied: Pumpkin S, Marrow S, Pepper S, Poi S, Tobacco (used before very at ritual ends), prickly peartrees or '' tunas '', Corn and especially potatoes and Quinoa.

They fattened their cultures with the Guano of the birds of the coast, which they transported to back of LAMA. They carried out also a barter trade with the wandering fishermen Chango S, who were established on the coast; they exchanged thus mainly their meat in the form of Charqui (meat salted and dried with the sun), against fish and seafood.

Atacamas used the LAMA S as animals of load and also fed from their meat and were dressed in their skins and the wool which they obtained from them. They protected their agglomerations by walls built from stones, true forts called pucará or pukará (word runa simi or quechua whose correct pronunciation seems to be will púkara ). They developed an important ceramics craft industry, and moreover, he were the first people which started to use the ore of Cuivre that they extracted from Chuquicamata, and the Or of the mine of Incahuasi (Catamarca).

Of agreement with the found archaeological vestiges and the investigations carried out in this part of South America, the names of their establishments remain to date, like the oases of Quitor, Chiu-Chiu, Lasana, Turi, Topayín, Susques, Calama, Antofagasta of the Sierra like one of their more important centers of their culture, the oasis of San Pedro de Atacama close to the old town of Tastil.

The populations Atacama or Lickan-antay which lived in the coastal regions developed a somewhat differentiated culture (though the ethnic unit was maintained) which results in the culture of the Chango S.

The descendants of Atacamas live mainly on the ancestral grounds, though very mixed. They form part of the creole population or are included in the complex mixture of the Indians called today Colla S.

Their language

Their idiom was the kunza, recently extinguished, although words of this language maintain in various toponyms. There remains also some words in the language running of the area, but usually one believes them of origin " quechua".

Religion

Atacamas believed in various gods, who according to them, lived the tops of the volcano Licancabur. They also believed in a life after death, and this is why they buried their deaths with all the necessary one for the long voyage which awaited them.

Agrarian period and ceramics of the culture of Atacamas

First stage

It is located between 400 and 900. It is characterized by a pale red pottery, anthropomorphic jugs (of human form) and the use of ornaments and vases in or.

Second stage

Between 900 and 1200, there is use of a polished black ceramics. One notices the influence of the culture of Tiwanaku, by the use of shelves to aspire hallucinogens, mainly the cebil and the cactus " San Pedro" or huanto, with carved figures men, condors and the cat-like ones, as well as the use of the tambetá (word of origin guaraníe) or labial ornament. The use of the hallucinogens or the Enthéogène S, as for all the other indigenous ethnos groups of America before the European conquest, was purely ritual, i.e. one could consume those only in very specific situations, for example when a Chaman was to try to make a divination and to put itself in liaison with the gods. It is at least what they believed.

Third stage

This one, ranging between 1200 and 1500, watch the influence of incaïque civilization and leaves us in testimony the construction of fortresses or will púkara made stones, surrounded by walls, with narrow streets and tight dwellings.

Archaeological centers and museums

San Pedro de Atacama

The small city of San Pedro de Atacama was principal the Oasis of the culture of Atacamas, centers of its cultural development. Since the end of the XXe century, the economic main activity of the city is tourism, followed agriculture of the indigenous communities of the area.

Archaeological museum R.P. Gustavo Paige

In this museum located at San Pedro, is all the history and the archeology of the culture of Atacamas. The history of the museum goes back to the arrival in Chile of the priest Jésuite of origin Belgian Gustave Paige, which settled in San Pedro de Atacama in 1955. On its arrival in the area, its interest for the culture atacama woke up, and it started with investiguer prehistoric cemeteries, workshops lithic and all places impregnated culture of these people. He thus started to join together an enormous collection, now lodged by the " Museo Arqueológico" , inaugurated in 1957.

This impressive meeting of archaeological material of appreciable value, contains more 380.000 parts and account among those of ceramics, the material lithic, the textiles and metals prehispanic, as well as mummies.

The partiality of Lípes

See too

San Pedro de Atacama
the desert of Atacama
the Salar d' Atacama
ethnos group of the Lípe S
the Diaguita S

References

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