Avaliação: Beyond writing and iconography: coding – Coding and decoding the ideology and politics of the past

Our work analyzes a process of proliferation of signs and aspects of iconography, understood as a central element in changes at an ideological level, closely related to social, political and economic aspects. The Formative Period in the extreme north of Chile (1700/1400 BC and 300/500 AD) is presented as a scenario of gradual changes that gave rise to different processes of social, cultural and ideological consolidation. The traditional approach to archaeology interpreted these transformations based on indicators of sedentarization processes and incipient agriculture, settlement and funerary patterns, and certain technological innovations present in the archaeological record. Recently, new works seek to broaden this view, through the analysis of symbolic and ideological aspects. Through a semiotic analysis that approaches the different agents and actions involved in the production of signs and ideology of this period, we hope to guide the study towards the process of consumption of those signs presumably produced during the Formative Period in the extreme north of Chile and Peruvian south coast. This “proliferation of signs” is widely distributed in movable objects (basketry, textiles, ceramics, and metals, among others) and other immovable supports, as an active component in the social life of formative populations. Based on the archaeological evidence, we argue, it is possible to approach ideological and political aspects of the social groups that used such signs.

• Semiotic
• Sings
• Ideology