Constantino Torres

Florida International University | FIU · Department of Art and Art History

This investigation focuses on the North Andes and includes discussion of monumental stone sculpture in the environs of San Agustín, Colombia, as well as Muisca, Quimbaya, and Darién (Sinú) goldworking traditions. Through formal and iconographic analyses of ceremonial paraphernalia, this paper shows that the primary ideologies of the cultures of thi...

A multidisciplinary study of pre-Columbian South America—centering on the psychoactive plant genus Anadenanthera As cultures formed and evolved in pre-Columbian South America, Anadenanthera became one of the most widely used shamanic inebriants. Anadenanthera: Visionary Plant of Ancient South America is more than a comprehensive reference on shaman...

Carbon-14 (14C) dating from mummies of the Alto Ramirez culture confirms that coca leaf chewing was an incipient practice among members of a population that peopled the valleys and coastal areas of Northern Chile by 3,000 years before the present (yr.B.P.). Out of eleven bodies from the burial site of Pisagua-7 (PSG-7, S 19 degrees 35', W 70 degree...

A comparative analysis of the use of psychoactive plants in northern Chile, specifically San Pedro de Atacama and the Middle Loa and its tributaries (Caspana, Toconce, Lasaña, Chiu-Chiu), with NW Argentina, asaproba-ble diagnostic tool of shifting patterns of interaction. This work presents a review of the evidence for the ingestión of psychoactive...

San Pedro de Atacama es reconocido en el ámbito de la arqueología por el alto número de tabletas y tubos que, por asociación etnográfica, sabemos que se relacionan con la esfera chamánica. En los registros de Le Paige hemos contabilizado 522 tabletas, en una muestra de 20 cementerios con un total de 2574 tumbas; esto representa un promedio de 20% d...

Los objetivos de este trabajo son: 1) clasificar la iconografía de las tabletas para inhalar sustancias psicoactivas de la zona de San Pedro de Atacama; 2) definir cada elemento de posible valor iconográfico, establecer sus variantes y asociaciones más frecuentes, y 3) colocar los motivos representados en las tabletas dentro del contexto de imágene...