The rock art of a transition area: Azul Pampa, Jujuy, Argentina

Azul Pampa, Jujuy, Argentina

Abstract

The rock art of Inca Cueva, Alto Sapagua, Hornaditas, Cerro Negro and other localities in this microrregion, has been studied by several researchers since more than a hundred years ago. In this case, from a processual point of view, we started our research considering it as an archaeological marker, and doing ethnoarchaeological research locally at the same time. In these tasks, we had an intense interaction with the original inhabitants and we started changing our first point of view, after what we were told during the years, as well as consulting previous registers and andean cosmovision literature. Especially as in this locality, rock art has continued being produced upto the present, in the same powerful places since antiquity, as well as in the internal walls of houses, and even in hermetic sectors of small local churches, sometimes owned by the families. We can for that reason know how their production took place as well as their meaning. We try to give sense then to some of the archaeological images especially wthin the temporal block studied, and we interpret them after this learning.