Minería de las arcillas en tiempos prehispánicos (Departamento Tinogasta, Catamarca, Argentina)

Abstract

Mining was the subject of numerous investigations in the pre-Hispanic Andes, but the non-metalliferous received less treatment than the metalliferous because it does not generate visible anthropic features such as tunnels and / or galleries, it does not have a profuse historical and ethnographic information, and it was not considered that rocks and clay slabs, like other minerals, go through mining processes that are impregnated of social significance. In this context, our objective is to delineate the socio-cultural dimensions of the Area of La Troya (Tinogasta, Catamarca, Argentina) related to the use of homonymous Alfar, exploited overtime by societies with different socio-political organizations, and with the archaeological sites of the societies of the first and second millennium in that area. For this, we articulate historical, ethnographic information and the existing geochemical information of the ceramic materials and mud-clay banks. We hypothesize that the deposits of raw material of the Alfar La Troya had a prestige that was maintained and reproduced through orality in pre-Inca societies, which was apprehended by the Inca when he occupied the territory, as a strategy to appropriate the spaces with high symbolic value of the annexed peoples.