…The traditional economy of the Atacameños is based on agriculture and livestock herding, activities that are practiced in the region’s different ecosystems, which are identified, classified and exploited according…
History
…Heirs to the Archaic hunter-gatherer way of life, the early ceramicists of Choapa began to practice dry farming of crops to supplement their diet. Their pottery has certain stylistic…
Marine hunter-gatherers of the Semi-arid North
…cultural traitswith other early Pacific coast groups, raising the possibility that this way of life may have been present in the Americas since it was first settled. At first these…
Far South
…story, centuries removed from those early 16th century interactions between the European navigators crossing the indigenous waters and the native groups, with their animal hide capes and feather headdresses, their…
Arid North
…at a province called Turapaca (Tarapacá), where the natives were in a state of rebellion and had hidden all the food and livestock. Finally, in early 1537, they reached the…
History
…to the so-called Colla Señorío of the Aymaras, which was based on the shores of Lake Titicaca in pre-Hispanic times). In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, some of…
History
…another reference in 1764 names the caciques (chiefs) and other indigenous residents of that same town. In the early decades of the 20th century, ethnologist Ricardo Latcham proposed that the…
Settlement Pattern
…Cosca, Puquios, Aucanquilcha and Santa Rosa, based around small ranches that include garden plots alongside the corrals and seasonal dwellings. It is worth nothing that, owing to their past and…
Pre-hispanic music of Chile
…to the forefront, with its intricate sound based on different lengths of cane. In Pica and the Atacama, in contrast, a complex ritual was developed around the raspy, intense, atonal…
Organización Social
…The Copiapó people probably lived in kinship-based societies with no social classes but with some individuals having more status based on their ability to mobilize the population and redistribute…
Social organization
…The Aymara people include several ethnic subgroups, each with its own dialect and social structure. In general, their social organization is based on territorial divisions, although the adoption of…
Economy
…The Aymara economy is based on two ancestral principles: complementarity and reciprocity. Through complementarity, the Aymara take advantage of the different products that can be grown or produced in…
Beliefs and funeral rites
…The Kawésqar cosmovision was based on the people’s belief in a solitary and independent supreme being, Xolás. The creator of everything, including traditions and morals, Xolás was thought to…
History
…While those in Tagua Tagua still practiced a Paleo-Indian way of life that was based on the hunting of large game (megafauna), in the mountains of Central Chile the…
Social organization
…larger groups based in semi-permanent camps located mostly in resource-rich locations. At times, several different groups that maintained relations through political alliances and kinship ties would meet for a time….
Social organization
…The Chinchorro lived in small bands or groups of 30 to 50 individuals, apparently based on kinship. They would certainly have had a division of roles based on expertise…
Social organization
…based on kinship as well as reciprocity and redistribution among leaders, who also maintained ties with other groups of this ethnicity. Social distinctions within units were based on status and…
Beliefs and Funerary Practices
…The Diaguitas have celebrated Catholic religious celebrations since colonial times, as this part of the Norte Chico was one of the first to be evangelized in the early colonial…
Economía
…quinoa, maize, beans and squash. They were highly skilled in handling guanaco, practicing semi-domestication by capturing wild young guanaco, which the early Spanish chroniclers called chilihueque. They also hunted sea…
Terrestrial hunter-gatherers
…laid for the development of another way of life among certain groups that would prevail virtually throughout the prehistoric period in Chile, and even into the early 20th century in…
Economía
…What little information we have indicates that these groups probably subsisted on a diet of quinoa, which they cultivated. This assumption is based on examination of the only two…
Hunter-gatherers of the Arid North
…At the end of the Pleistocene, the hunter-gatherers of the arid north hada way of life based on their regular movement from the lowlands to the edge of…
Economy
…The economy of these inland hunters was based mainly on a highly mobile way of life sustained by hunting of guanaco and, to a lesser extent, of deer, foxes,…
Economy
…crew members, most of them rowers. Sails were used on the boats when the wind was favorable. Early chroniclers and writers mentioned these vessels, admiring their design and the prowess…