INTRODUCTION

This chapter considers prehistoric patterns of interaction in northern Chile from the time of the early agricultural settlements to the late pre-Hispanic period. Northern Chile encompasses the Atacama Desert and oases and the western valleys of the Andes mountains (Figure 48.1), more or less south to the location of contemporary Santiago/Copiapo. It is an “Andean” region in cultural, geographic and environmental terms, in contrast to the area lying south, a region characterized by temperate forests, steppes, fjords, islands, high rainfall, and extremely simple societies from the earliest prehistoric occupations through the ethnographically known peoples of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego (see McEwan et al. 1997 for the most current discussion).

The Highland Andean Tradition appeared in northern Chile by the time the old Chinchorro tradition was dying out (see Chapter 3 in this volume), overlapping Chin-chorro for a period of five hundred years, and running up to recent times. Within this Andean Tradition a specific suite of features from the circum-Titicaca/altiplano area intruded into the coastal valleys of northern Chile as a result of influence from alti-plano societies.

The manifestation of influences from the altiplano that developed in the western valleys was somewhat different from those influences in the Atacama Desert zone. In the former, it seems there was a more direct relation to the circum-Titicaca area, becoming a constituent part of the emerging civilization that later centered on the Tiwanaku state. In the desert, the influence was rather indirect and more symbolic. This is identified with the Alto Ramirez development in both the western valleys and the Atacama Desert. My essay begins with Alto Ramirez and continues through the Inca conquest (see Figure 48.2).

Handbook of South American Archaeology, edited by Helaine Silverman and William H. Isbell. Springer, New York, 2008