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Radiocarbon Dating of Atacama (Chile) Snuff Trays: An Update on Stylistic and Chronological Correlations

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 February 2016

Pascale Richardin ,
Catherine Lavier ,
Helena Horta ,
Valentina Figueroa  and
Nicolás Lira
Pascale Richardin*
Affiliation:
Centre de Recherche et de Restauration des Musées de France, Palais du Louvre, Porte des Lions, 14 quai François Mitterrand, F-75001 Paris, France
Catherine Lavier
Affiliation:
Université Pierre et Marie Curie, UPMC Paris 06, UMR 8220, Laboratoire d'Archéologie Moléculaire et Structurale, LAMS, Paris, France
Helena Horta
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Museo R.P. Gustavo Le Paige S.J., Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile
Valentina Figueroa
Affiliation:
Instituto de Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Museo R.P. Gustavo Le Paige S.J., Universidad Católica del Norte, Chile
Nicolás Lira
Affiliation:
Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris 01, UMR 8096, Paris, France
*
Corresponding author. Email: [email protected].
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Abstract

The Atacama region of Chile has the highest concentration of hallucinogenic paraphernalia from prehistoric cemeteries on the planet. These artifacts have been studied since the late 19th century, primarily from the perspective of stylistic classification, which has been used to infer their temporal assignation. However, direct chronological dating of the snuff trays has not been addressed until now, through an interdisciplinary study conducted in San Pedro de Atacama on the psychotropic paraphernalia collection of the Instituto de Investigaciones Arqueológicas y Museo R.P. Gustavo Le Paige S.J. (IIAM), part of the Universidad Católica del Norte. In this study, samples were taken from eight snuff trays for radiocarbon dating and to develop a suitable procedure and protocol for sample extraction and handling of wooden archaeological pieces. This article provides the results of these activities by establishing the existence of a sequence of styles in the hallucinogenic paraphernalia that goes from the Middle to Late Intermediate period (about AD 300 to 1400), which shows that in this time-span there were two styles (Tiwanaku and local), and then both were replaced by a macroregional style.

Type
Articles
Information
Radiocarbon , Volume 57 , Issue 5 , 2015 , pp. 775 - 784
Copyright
Copyright © 2015 The Arizona Board of Regents on behalf of the University of Arizona 

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