Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Mitologías navieras de Atacama. El caballito de totora de Jean-Christian Spahni

2022; Volume: 68; Linguagem: Inglês

10.22199/issn.0718-1043-2022-0012

0718-1043

Benjamín Ballester, Gloria Cabello,

Cultural and Social Studies in Latin America

A totora reed raft has roamed Chilean archaeology since 1967. Biography over biography, from the original piece a new object was created, now virtual and different from its predecessor. The supposed miniature raft was consolidated over time as irrefutable evidence of the age of these vessels and of pre-Hispanic navigation in northern Chile and even in the Andes. The recent study of the object deposited at the Musée d'Ethnographie de Genève in Switzerland reveals that instead of a raft it is a bundle of plant fibers, a kind of artefact common in the funerary contexts of the Formative period in northern Chile, described as paintbrushes, brushes, combs or packs of raw materials. The initial confusion of the Jean-Christian Spahni and the reproduction of his later biographers serves as an input to discuss how archaeological evidence is constructed and how accounts are written in prehistory.