De la cotidianidad a la ritualidad de las calabazas durante el período intermedio tardío en el desierto de Atacama, Chile

the gourds from attributed to the Late Intermediate Period (1000-1430 ad). The analysis is carried out from a mate-rialistic archaeosemiotic approach, relating Peircean semiotics to categories of the concrete society. A division is identified between the uses of the gourds and forms of sociability in daily-domestic and magical-religious ritual life, and the gourds are conceived as iconographic media that reflect the forms of social consciousness of a dominant group. It is concluded that these funeral objects and their signs not only represent prestige and distinction goods, but also manifest an ideological function regarding power relations, linked to the consumption of fermented beverages and entheogenic substances, and to altered states of consciousness.