Tomás Paulo Paya

The project investigates the role of rock art in the processes of construction and transmission of social memory in the Middle Calchaquí Valley (MCV) (Northwest Argentina) during the second millennium AD, when successive periods of dramatic transformations of social order shaped new configurations of political structure and collective identity in Andean communities. I focus on six sites in the Molinos and Angastaco Basins for the characterization of rock art landscapes at regional scale, through intensive total coverage surveys following a distributional methodology. I analyze the diversity and variability of rock art motifs, techniques and locations. I take into account intra-rock relations, chronological differences and associations with natural and social environment to delve into attitudes, decisions and perceptions of people regarding traces of their past. I also assess the circulation of these visual languages in other material media (pottery, metal, bone, textile) in regional contexts, and its relation with rock art from neighboring regions. Accounting for the multiplicity of ways in which material culture and social practice intersect and engage in mnemonic dynamics. I consider rock art as a memory-laden materiality that possesses high potential and special properties for bridging the past and the present within certain political and ideological processes.