CONCILIACIÓN INTERCULTURAL:

Present-day llama herding practices in the Atacama have been used as analogies for the herding of camelids in the past. Núñez (1988: 456) has claimed that the low density of camelid herding, with little human intervention, as practised today by the Chaile family, may be used as a model to account for the archaeological record of site TU 54, located near the spring of Tulan.6_{Similarly, Rabey (1989:} 269) maintained that highland Argentinian llama herding practices, unmixed as they are with alpacas, are of great theoretical interest because they provide a heuristic model for understanding the domestication process, and the relation- ship between human beings and animals in that process. The neglect typified by Rabey of the high-altitude herders of north-west Argentina towards their llamas may be more apparent than real, and the apparent lack of supervision of domesticated camelids in the present requires some comment.

In Isluga, herders train their animals to act as a unit and they frequently accompany their animals to encourage them to follow habitually a sequence of movements within a relatively circumscribed area. Stated in other words, animal and human interests coincide, and the human owners encourage their animals to move from higher-ground, dry sleeping places to wet bofedales during the daytime until sunset. This is a cycle of events the animals follow anyway, but herders take them to places where they can be easily found, and where the human owners have rights to allow their animals to graze. In the valleys surrounding the Salar de Atacama, human control over llamas is exerted in a more subtle manner. Not only are water resources more limited, but the llamas must be kept apart from the cultivated lands at Guatin and at Peine and, to a lesser extent, at Tilomonte. This

means that their owners have a good idea where their animals will be, even though they only supervise their herds at intervals of one to two weeks, since llamas descend to water on a daily basis. Herders ensure that sufficient adult animals remain in the herd to guide the younger animals and to maintain good herd discipline. However, the less vigilant control apparently exerted by Atacama herders can be made possible only in the absence both of predators and also of large numbers of wild camelids. Nowadays, pumas are very rare indeed, and are all but absent in the hills. Foxes may prey on young llamas, and herders often construct traps of stone to deal with this danger. In addition, female and newly born llamas are separated from the males during the first part of the year and are kept under closer supervision. Thus losses due to predation are minimized. Another important factor, the scarcity of large herds of wild camelids in the area, means that llamas have little chance of going feral and joining their wild counterparts. Indeed, wild camelids are more likely to join the company of herds of llamas. On 6 October 1987, I observed a vicuña in one of the herds of llamas grazing on the bank of the Tulan river (plate 7.2). The vicuña was nervous as it was aware of human beings on the other side of the quebrada, but it did not run off and it remained with the herd as the animals made their way downstream. This vicuña was possibly a solitary male displaced from a family group.

The type of pastoral control over llama herds described above is also practised in the Vega de Turi, further north in the upper Loa basin, and it has been reported

Plate 7.2 Llamas accompanied by a solitary vicuña, immediately downstream from the spring at Tulan. The photograph was taken from near site TU 57.

in north-west Argentina (Merlino and Rabey 1978; 1985; Rabey 1989). This characteristic style of camelid herding in the highland pasture areas of the Atacama in territory on each side of the present-day international frontier between Chile and Argentina is the result of many factors. Following the Spanish invasion, human settlement patterns changed as the dispersed population was settled into more centralized villages by the Spanish, a process particularly occurring with the reforms of Viceroy Toledo in Peru after 1572. In addition, sheep and goats were introduced into the Andes. Another introduction was that of alfalfa, a source of fodder which, unlike native Andean plants, may be stored. In the intervening centuries, the exploitation of various mines in the area attracted migrant (espe- cially male) labour, taking more men than women away from communities. This meant that women became largely responsible for maintaining the homestead, while male members of the family tended to spend longer periods working in mining centres such as Chuquicamata (Valdés et al. 1983: 24, 48–9).7_{Hence, few} families possess enough members to supervise closely sheep, goats and llamas. Since llamas can be trained and are predictable in their movements, more constant supervision is given to the sheep and goats. Nevertheless, Merlino and Rabey (1978: 52–8, photo 3) reported practices comparable to those in Isluga, including the irrigation of pasture lands by canals and the celebration of the Pachamama in a particular form of cultural adaptation in an annual ritual herding cycle to which they ascribed some antiquity.

Rabey (1989) concluded that the herding system he described for highland north-west Argentina does not constitute a pastoral system. However, he did not study the present-day situation to observe whether a structural transformation has taken place that would denote a shift from one dominant mode of resource exploitation to another, and it is not clear how his material may be used to help understand the domestication process, as he claimed.

A study of the material record from late archaic period sites in the region indicates that hunter-gatherer peoples added the herding of camelids to their economy. The first site in the study area at which this transition has been detected is PU 1. However, as pastoralists, one of their most important concerns was surely to keep their own animals alive for as long as possible. Hence the bulk of their diet probably derived from their hunting and gathering activities. The herders of PU 1 and of later sites in the Tulan Quebrada must have kept their herds of domesticated camelids in a context where herds of wild camelids were common- place. Presumably, the herds with human owners temporarily displaced the wild herds in the narrow Tulan canyon when site TU 54 was occupied. Hesse (1982b: 12) claims that pastoralism established in the Atacama an adaptation which ensured its success by destroying the potential for other systems. Presumably he is referring to the hunting of wild camelids.

However, Chapter 8 will present evidence for the continuing exploitation of raw materials provided by wild animals. It should also be remembered that the eighteenth-century evidence for vicuña hunting cited in Chapter 2 suggests that herds of vicuña and guanaco were not scarce. Thus the pastoralist societies using the Purifica and Tulan rivers and the surrounding pastures, should be seen against

a background which was populated by far greater numbers of guanaco and vicuña herds than at present. Because present-day conditions are markedly changed, it is my opinion that ethnographic analogies based on the present-day exploitation of pasture in the Atacama should be used with great caution.