Rock Art, Historical Ontologies, and the Genealogy of Landscape

Prehispanic ontologies can be conceptualized as historically situated meshworks that unfold particular engagements among humans, other-than-humans, places and substances. The affective and animacy capacities of the participant of these fields of relations are connected to their historical position within them. Through comparing the visual, technical, and spatial attributes of rock art production during 3,500 years in Valle El Encanto (Chile), we describe how the manufacture of rock paintings and petroglyphs unfolded different fields of relations. Based on the above, this chapter discusses how these particular meshworks were related to specific historical landscapes and two different ontologies: one related to hunter-gatherer groups and another to Andean-agrarian communities. The transformation identified in Valle El Encanto allows us to discuss the historical replacement of ontologies, as well as how social practices and the affective and animacy capacities of other-than-humans, places and substances changed their relative position within the fields of relation throughout history.