The micro-Raman spectroscopy was used to identify manganese oxides, pyrolusite, manganite and cryptomelane in archaeological sites in northern Atacama Desert, Chile. The present micro-Raman data allow us to compare and expand the origins of raw materials used by archaic groups of the Atacama Desert. In the Andean highlands, pyrolusite and manganite were identified while in the coastal lowlands manganite and cryptomelane were found. The present results complement the data obtained from the lithic materials and rock art painting analyses pointing to a better understanding of the daily life of ancient populations and minerals use in this region. Graphical Black pigments found in three archaeological sites from northern Chile. Two of them are from the highlands: Tangani (Ta-1 and Ta-14) and one from the coast, Maderas Enco (Ari-26 and Ari-27). Raman spectra of different manganese oxides a) Ta-1, b) Ta-14, c) Ari-26 and d) Ari-27.

The high Andes of western South America feature extreme ecological conditions that impose important physiological constraints on humans including high-elevation hypoxia and cold stress. This leads to questions regarding how these environments were colonized by the first waves of humans that reached them during the late Pleistocene. Based on previous research, and aided by human behavioral ecology principles, we assess hunter-gatherer behavioral strategies in the Andean highlands during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Specifically, we formulate three mobility strategies and their archaeological expectations and test these using technological and subsistence evidence from the six earliest well-dated highland sites in northern Chile. Our results suggest that all of the studied sites were temporarily occupied for hunting, processing animals, and toolkit maintenance. The sites also exhibit shared technological features within a curatorial strategy albeit with different occupation intensities. From this evidence, we infer that the initial occupations of the highlands were logistical and probably facilitated by increased local resource availability during a period of environmental amelioration.

The relations between humans and animals extend into socio-cultural aspects that go beyond the mere acquisition of food, meaning that animals constitute cultural resources that fulfill diverse roles in social and cultural systems. Visual images in different media, including rock art, represent one of the ways in which these complex relationships take place. While in the New World few comparative analyses of archaeofaunal and visual data have been addressed, in the Old World these studies have been framed by a dichotomist view between drawn (thought) and consumed (eaten) understanding, both terms as separate and disconnected social realms. This view also structures an abstract, non-pragmatic, rather passive, world drawn in art, against a concrete, practical, active world of consumption. The analysis we present here, based on principles of substantive economy theory, explores the relation between humans and animals in the prehistory of the Atacama Desert (ca. 13,000–410BP), by comparing visual images of fauna depicted in rock art (engravings and paintings) with archaeofaunal remains from domestic and funerary contexts. The dataset (comprised of 1534 archaeofaunal items and 729 rock art animal motifs from 117 sites) was standardized by calculating the percentage of ubiquity of each animal item per period of time, using Spearman’s rank correlation coefficients to identify synchronic and diachronic changes in the relative importance of certain animals consumed. We observed important temporal and contextual variations in the consumption of animals drawn in rock art in the Atacama Desert, and we conclude that they reflect a selection of a wide range of ritual and utilitarian, but not mutually exclusive, functions. In particular, images of camelids emphasized the importance of providing fiber for the creation of textile artifacts and camelid use as pack animals in the caravan trade, both activities that were fundamental in the economy of local societies