Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino

Cultures > Southern > Southern Maritime Hunters or Canoe Hunters

Arte

The Southern Canoe Hunters made a wide range of items from the bones of the marine mammals that they hunted, adding spiritual power to them with fine geometric incisions and occasional animal motifs. The teeth of sea lions and fox were drilled at the base to make pendants and necklaces. The walls of some caves in the region were painted with geometric forms using red pigments, although rock art seems to have been very infrequent among the southern canoe peoples. The same red pigments may have been used in body painting, which the people practiced from ancient times and continued until first contact with Europeans.