Archaeologies of Rock Art ― South American Perspectives

Rock art in South America is as diverse as the continent itself. In this vast territory, different peoples produced engravings, paintings, and massive earthworks, from the Atacama to the Amazon. These marks on the landscape were made by all different kinds of peoples, from some of the earliest hunter-gatherers in the continent, to the very complex societies within the Inca Empire. This book brings together the work of specialists from throughout the continent, addressing this diversity, as well as the variety of approaches that the Archaeology of rock art has taken in South America.

Constructed of eleven thought-provoking chapters and arranged in three thematic sections, the book presents different theoretical approaches that are currently being used to understand the roles rock art played in prehistoric communities. The editors have skillfully crafted a book that presents the contribution the study of South American rock art can offer to the global research of this materiality, both theoretically and methodologically.

This book will interest a broad range of scholars researching in archaeology, anthropology, history of art, heritage and conservation, as well as undergraduate and postgraduate students who will find interesting case studies showcasing the diverse ways in which rock art can be approached. Despite its focus on South America, the book is intended as a contribution towards the global study of rock art.

Andres Troncoso gained his Archaeology degree at the Universidad de Chile, and PhD in Archaeology at Universidad de Santiago de Compostela (Spain). He also was a Postdoctoral visiting Fellow at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA). He is currently an Associate Professor at the Department of Anthropology, Universidad de Chile. He has directed several projects in Chile funded by the Chilean National Fund for Science and Technology (FONDECYT), National Geographic, and Wenner-Gren Foundation, among others. His research focuses on the way in which rock art was engaged in the social reproduction of past communities and in the construction of landscape along History, developing comparative studies. Andres has published books and several articles on Chilean prehistory, rock art, the Inkas, and landscape archaeology.

Felipe Armstrong gained his degree in Archaeology from the Universidad de Chile, and holds a Master in Comparative Art and Archaeology from the UCL Institute of Archaeology, same institution where he is currently completing his PhD in Archaeology. He is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Anthropology of Universidad Alberto Hurtado (Chile). Felipe has worked on rock art from North-Central Chile, assessing its role in the configuration of social and collective memory, and in the relational and sensorial fields of pre-Hispanic communities. He also works on Rapa Nui’s (Easter Island) anthropomorphic objects, assessing their role in the embodied world experiences of late prehistoric and early historic islanders.

George Nash is a Research fellow and former lecture at the Department of Archaeology and Anthropology, University of Bristol, and Associate Professor at the Museum of Prehistoric Art (Quaternary and Prehistory Geosciences Centre, Macao, Portugal [IPT]). Dr Nash has undertaken extensive fieldwork in Brazil and central Chile and is currently involved in rock art research in Israel and Mongolia.