The late landscape in Hualfín Valley: an archaeological reconstruction from protected villages

Abstract

In this paper we present a relational landscape perspective and we analyze a set of archaeological sites (that we called protected villages because of their emplacement on top of hills with different grade of accessibility) for late moments in Hualfín Valley (Belén, Catamarca), considering archaeological indicators belonging to spatial dimension, as placement, topography, access barriers, spatial configuration and visual scope. Results indicate that these villages have important differences (in grade and quality) between them in most variables. Otherwise, lines of vision show an important contrast between Southern Sector, absolutely integrated by direct relations, and Northern Sector, fragmented, with no direct visual lines between the villages. As from these results, we propose some lines to analyze related with aspects about temporal dimension (radiocarbon dates) and material objects dimension, particularly obsidian and different pottery styles distribution. We hypothesize that differences between Northern and Southern sectors could be a product of different grades of regional integration in the valley during fifteenth century, and maybe diverse socio-political responses dealing with the relations with local or foreign groups.