Introduction: Southern Deserts Historical Archaeology
Int J Histor Archaeol
Introduction: Southern Deserts Historical Archaeology
Amalia Nuevo Delaunay 0 1
Alistair Paterson 0 1
Amalia Nuevo Delaunay 0 1
0 Social Sciences/Archaeology, University of Western Australia , M257, Perth, WA , Australia
1 Departamento de Antropología, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Alberto Hurtado , Almirante Barroso 10, Santiago , Chile
During November 2014, the IV Southern Desert Conference was held in the province of Mendoza, Argentina. The conference held every few years for scholars working on Southern Hemisphere deserts including archaeologists, paleoecologists, geomorphologists, and others. During the five days that the conference took place, a total of 101 papers and posters were presented in ten interdisciplinary sessions that promoted interactions among attendants. Oral presentations were intended to provide synthesis on regional long-term interdisciplinary work, while posters were thought for more specific technical papers. Several key archaeological syntheses have arisen (Barberena et al. 2016; Borrazo et al. 2016; Veth et al. 2016). We organized a session entitled Historical Challenges for Desert Peoples: Towards the Comparative Study of Responses to Intrusions and Ecological Change. We considered that the Southern Deserts Conference provide radically different opportunities for a comparative study of how various desert peoples dealt with change in the historical era. For the session proposed we were interested in the arrival of various Boutsiders^ who occupy, neighbor, or influence the lives of deserts dwellers. In some places these encounters follow millennia of desert interaction with neighboring societies, often practicing farming and herding economies. In others, desert societies were articulated through trade and exchange networks, all greatly disrupted at Bcontact.^ The growing field of contact archaeology provides case studies and models for cultural change but few attempts are comparative analyses. In the session we considered at a continental and intercontinental level how historical contacts between desert societies and others can be considered in a comparative manner. Are there common initial reactions to
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Boutsiders^? Are the various theoretical models of resistance, accommodation and
ethnogenesis appropriate to these historical contexts as a whole? What explains the
similarities and differences apparent in taking an extra-regional comparative
perspective?
As a result, papers describing historical archaeological research in the deserts or
semi-arid regions of southern Africa, Australia, and South America were presented.
Although developing on different regions, all of the papers focus in how desert people
have dealt with challenges; encompassing ecological and environmental challenges,
challenges arising from the colonial era, and engaging both indigenous or colonist
topics.
In this Special Collection, Southern Deserts Historical Archaeology, we
proudly present the papers authored by Peter Mitchell, Raquel Gil Montero,
Flora Vilches and Héctor Morales, Jill Kinahan, and Alistair Paterson.
Peter Mitchell, in his paper entitled I Rode through the Desert: Equestrian
Adaptations of Indigenous Peoples in Southern Hemisphere Arid Zones, analyses
the adoption of the horse since the fifteenth- to nineteenth-century by the
Indigenous inhabitants of Patagonia, the Karoo and Kalahari of southern Africa, and the
deserts of Australia. Taking into account the variability of this equestrian
adaptations, this vast study explores from the necessary conditions to adopt the horse, to
the impact of its adoption in the social, economic, and political dominion.
Raquel Gil Montero, in her paper entitled Regional Impact of Mining Activity
During Colonial Times in the Highlands of Southern Bolivia, focuses on
demography and socio economic activities to analyze the effect of the introduction of
mining activities in the highland desert of Lípez after the Spanish conquest. The
author develops a thorough analyses of censuses information of the different
regions of Lípez from 1603 onwards, in order to analyze a transformation from
a distribution pattern of the population related to natural resources, to one highly
related to mining activities.
Flora Vilches and Héctor Morales, in their paper entitled From Herders to Wage
Laborers and Back Again: Engaging with Capitalism in the Atacama Puna Region
of Northern Chile, also examine the mining industry and its impact on indigenous
Atacameño society from the end of the nineteenth century. By a comprehensive
study of the architecture and archaeological record of four sulfur and llareta
extraction sites, they analyze how the Puna herders engaged with these industries
on their own terms.
Jill Kinahan, in her paper entitled BNo need to hear your voice, when I can talk
about you better than you can speak about yourself…^ Discourses on Knowledge and
Power in the! Khuiseb Delta on the Namib Coast, 1780–2016 CE, develops an
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