ACONCAGUA: My last archaeological discovery!

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   Today I made an amazing archaeological discovery! 

I went to Los Andes city to visit a client in the corporate building of a copper mine, and after we finished the meeting I asked my boss a break to visit the Archaeological Museum of the city. A quite small museum by Chilean standards, but well provided of interesting pieces.

Well, the caretaker, that was also the director of the museum, start to describe the objects in there and when he found out I was an amateur archaeologist the conversation start to get very long.

In there, besides Inca, Diaguita, Mapuche and objects of others peoples, there were pieces of the Aconcagua culture, the group of people that populated originally the valley where I live in Chile. A people that I admire very much because of obvious reasons.

The Aconcaguas were the northern branch of the Mapuche culture, a people that become acculturized after the Inca invasion of Chile in the 15th century and that was assimilated to the Spanish invasors. They followed a distinct path, however, they spoke Mapuche like theirs cousins down south, and they also shared theirs cosmology and many of theirs customs.

To undestand my discovery, first let me show you the diagram of the Kultrun: the sacred drum of the Mapuche shaman (Machi)

The drum actually looks like this:

Now, the director of the museum show me the remains of the Aconcagua culture, from circa 900 A.D. up to 1500 A.D. The pieces looked like this:

That's the typical pottery of the Aconcagua culture, with Diaguita influences, it seem.

However, in two of the dishes shown there was draw the cross of the Kultrun!! (The sacred drum above)

The director of the museum explain me that the cross was very common in that culture, and that the kultrun pattern was one of the proofs that the Aconcagua culture was a Mapuche branch!
How old is the piece, I asked him? 800 years at least, he told me!

After seing that I could recognize, in another piece, a Mapuche myth!

I was stunned. That was a wonderful personal discovery. For myself, of course, because the experts found it before I even noticed it.

Pinguin

Edited by pinguin - 07-Sep-2007 at 23:41