South American archaeologists, much like archaeologists all over the world, are experts at exploring ancient interaction: who was moving where, what they took with them, and who they spent time with. A topic that created a lot of research and buzz over the last 10 years, for example, was possible genetic exchange between anatomically modern humans and neanderthal populations in Europe. In northern Chile, southern Bolivia, and northwestern Argentina, communities were in contact for thousands of years as mobile foragers or through trade caravans that traded ideas and objects. Such connections exist today. The modern movement of people and objects, however, is influenced by today’s national borders. These borders have been heavily militarized too, so borders are not simply lines drawn in the mountains.
Research Challenges Across Borders
Archaeological understanding of past interaction is also affected by national borders. Each scholar’s work depends on their access to different types of employment, money to travel to conferences, the availability of academic publications, and the possibility of research funds. These resources are not distributed similarly across all nations. Any collaboration among researchers from even neighboring countries is deeply influenced by such differences.
The study of pottery, which we know was traded throughout the south-central Andes, is complicated by several issues: not all scholars can travel to international conferences with the same ease (no matter where they are). Publications are either difficult to get or they are too expensive to produce and send abroad in large numbers. Not all scholars are able to spend the same amount of time on data collection, analysis, or writing up their results. Often, scholars work on ceramics that are well-published in neighboring countries without access to that literature.
Building Collaborative Networks
In an effort to forge more collaboration among international scholars of south-central Andean ceramics, my colleagues and I have initiated a series of workshops and symposia centered around the idea that we need to interact as much as ancient communities did to better understand the past, particularly why and how past people shared pottery in their houses and graves. It began with a symposium at the Chilean Archaeological Congress in 2012 called “Interactuemos Nosotros Tambien” (Let’s Interact as Well), followed by a Wenner Gren workshop in 2013 called “Sigamos Interactuando” (Let’s Continue Interacting). These activities brought scholars from five countries together to synthesize each region’s ceramic knowledge in a form easily understood by their neighbors. We wanted to overcome our tendency to assume our neighbors define and use the same ceramic types we do.
Digital Publishing Future
We are now developing our next step, which will use new digital publishing tools presented in the Institute for Digital Archaeology Methods and Practice at Michigan State University – East Lansing. Shaping this next stage of our project is ongoing. We are contemplating together how to recognize our collaborative work in new ways and leverage digital platforms to emphasize our fundamentally visual data. Keep posted to hear how we figure it out. We will be looking at other examples, developing new skills in social media to encourage participation from others, and thinking together about how our work can be enhanced and socialized through best practices in digital archaeology.
Emily Stovel
SWCA Environmental Consultants, Albuquerque, NM, USA
Instituto de Investigación Arqueológica y Museo Gustavo Le Paige, San Pedro de Atacama, Chile