Estudiamos el imperialismo incaico en el contexto de las formaciones socioterritoriales del Colesuyu durante la época prehispánica tardía (siglos quince y dieciséis). Por su poblamiento con alto grado de multietnicidad e imbricación socioterritorial, además de su heterogeneidad biogeográfica entre el Pacífico y el Altiplano, esta región de los Valles Occidentales de los Andes Centro-Sur planteó un reto geopolítico para su integración imperial. Nos interesamos aquí por el caso de los Altos de Arica, que los archivos coloniales describen como un espacio multiétnico, con complejos sistemas de asentamiento interdigitados, extendidos entre el altiplano de Carangas y el litoral de Arica. A partir de un catastro arqueogeográfico, complementado con datos de excavaciones y dataciones, analizamos el proceso de ordenamiento incaico del valle precordillerano de Belén (ca. 3.000 m snm), el cual era conocido como Tocoroma en los archivos coloniales y constituía la principal isla del archipiélago carangas en la vertiente occidental andina del 18° S. Evidenciamos la producción de un paisaje agrícola imperial en el valle y discutimos la función nodal de Tocoroma-Belén en el contexto de la integración socioterritorial de la transecta Arica-Carangas. Asimismo, el estudio confirma el protagonismo del Tawantinsuyu en la estructuración de los archipiélagos verticales de los Andes Centro-Sur, además de documentar la diversidad de los dispositivos de hegemonía imperial implementados para este fin.

To reflect on the potential of the Cultural Route heritage category as an instrument for cultural revitalization and community strengthening in highland regions, we analyze an interaction of actors involved in the co-construction of a hiking circuit in northern Chile that succeeded in its heritage-based design but not in its touristic implementation. Based on an in-depth analysis of the socioterritorial context and on participatory action research carried out to design the circuit, we discuss the reasons for the project's failure during the phase of community-based tourism model definition. This leads to broader conclusions on the intersections of current policies on heritage, multiculturalism, and environment, relating to the 2014 inscription of the Qhapaq ñan Andean road system on the World Heritage List. Finally, we highlight 3 lessons: (1) the need to clarify the risk of confusion between cultural revitalization and cultural tourism; (2) the Cultural Route category as a complex and heterogeneous heritage construct that is difficult to apply from global to local scales, and (3) the need to further develop Latin American regulations on heritage.

Archeological ceramic paste material typically consists of a mix of a clay matrix and various millimeter and sub-millimeter sized mineral inclusions. Micro X-ray fluorescence (XRF) is a standard compositional classification tool and in this work we propose and demonstrate an improved fluorescence map processing protocol where the mineral inclusions are automatically separated from the clay matrix to allow independent statistical analysis of the two parts. Application of this protocol allowed us to enhance the discrimination between different ceramic shards compared with the standard procedure of working with only the spatially averaged elemental concentrations. Using the new protocol, we performed an initial compositional classification of a set of 83 ceramic shards from the western slopes of the south central Andean region in the Arica y Parinacota region (Chile). Comparing the classifications obtained using the new versus the old (average concentrations only) protocols, we found that some samples were erroneously classified with the old protocol. From an archaeological perspective, a broad and heterogeneous regional sample set was used in this experimental study due to the fact that this was the first such analysis to be performed on ceramics from this region. This allowed a general overview to be obtained, however further work on more specific sample sets will be necessary to extract concrete archaeological conclusions.