Abstract
This paper contributes to the conception of visual art as a material culture artefact produced through a work process. Art-making work processes condense economic factors (raw material exploitation, labour organization, etc.), technological factors (materials, tools, techniques, etc.) and cognitive factors (knowledge, values, visual perceptions, etc.), all of which are inextricably linked in the creation of visual images. The paper argues that the analysis of such work process is a key element in understanding and interpreting the role of visual images within the social contexts in which they were made and used (displayed/worn, viewed), insofar as many of their functions, meanings and effects stemmed from such production contexts and from the different affordances of image-making techniques. These concepts are applied to the research of the body paintings created and worn by the Yamana/Yagan, whose ancestral territory is located in the southernmost region of Tierra del Fuego, where traditions of bone artefact decoration and pigment use have been documented along seven millennia. Body painting is analysed using a ‘visual archaeology’ approach, through the systematic study of a photographic record of 76 images taken in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, combined with information from the written record (50 historical-ethnographic sources from the seventeenth to the twentieth centuries, which are summarized for the first time in this publication). Results show that (a) the affordance of image-making techniques was flexibly exploited in order to generate design repertoires of higher or lower variability according to the type of situation of body painting display and (b) part of the visual and social effects of these images stemmed directly from their production contexts (e.g. domestic versus ceremonial, public versus secret) and from their techno-visual and performative affordances. Thus, the paper shows that art images-objects should not be interpreted only as final products, since many of their material and social qualities were deeply rooted in the very production processes that led to their existence.
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Notes
In the Western conventional definition of art, highly ornamented utilitarian objects do have a specific category, ‘decorative arts’, which entails that some of these have entered the ‘art’ realm, provided that they comply with the criterion that their formal properties of object design and decoration exceed their utilitarian function. This separation of ‘decorative arts’ (e.g. ceramics, glassware, metalware) from ‘fine arts’ (e.g. painting, sculpture) in Western art history parallels the separation of ‘portable art’ from ‘rock art’ in the archaeology of art.
It should be noted here that this knowledge construction on prehistoric/Indigenous art is not homogenous and that, as noted above, it is rooted in Western academic traditions, so the resulting discourses have often not taken into account the Indigenous voices of peoples whose ancestral territories were colonized and whose artworks were vandalized and/or collected: strengthening this dialogue is a forthcoming challenge in the archaeology of art.
Representational motifs can refer to a material or ideal referent both in a figurative manner (creating an iconic link to its real or imaginary appearance) or in a non-figurative or abstract manner (without such iconic link, via a conventional set of forms). Motifs can also not represent any real or ideal referent and thus be entirely non-representational (these are also often called ‘abstract’ in the bibliography).
Although they have different connotations, the terms ‘artist’ and ‘producer’ are used interchangeably in this paper.
A user of an image/object (or artwork) may be the same person who produced it, or a different one; I use the term user to refer both to persons who only view the image/object and those who interact with it in a more physical manner (see below).
Zangrando personal communication in 2019
The first-hand sources presented in this section are quoted in Fiore (2002) and listed in the supplementary material.
Techniques #5 and #7 were only used by the Shelk’nam, a neighbouring society whose territory was towards the north of the Yamana/Yagan territory (Fiore 2002). I have kept the original numbers of each technique in order to maintain consistency with the original research and later publications.
This has also been confirmed by a X2 test of these data, showing a statistically significant trend in the selection of such techniques (X2 = 45.9; df = 3; p value = 0.0001; 99% level of confidence).
It is very likely that, traditionally, the chiéjaus and kina paintings may have involved painting the whole body; however, in the 1920–1922 yamalashemoina, chiejaus and kina photos, no person or spirit is entirely naked: they all wear rolled-up sleeves and rolled-up trousers or a loin cloth, showing the deep level of Westernized cultural transformation of the Yamana/Yagan, at least when interacting with non-Indigenous observers. This marks a clear contrast with photographs of the nineteenth century, in which people are entirely naked or wear a hide cloak which does not cover the frontal portion of the torso and pelvis (Fiore 2002; ).
The application of these criteria depends on the availability of relevant information, which is not even throughout the many situations in which body painting was worn in Yamana/Yagan society.
Interestingly, Gusinde noted a self-painting case in which the person used a pocket mirror (ibid: 70). By the 1920s, such Western artefact had been adopted and adapted as an aid for this Indigenous habit. The use of mirrors might also have fostered the self-painting process, although there is no evidence to support such suggestion.
This dictionary was originally compiled by 1879.
In the 1922 kina photos, no spirit is entirely naked: they all wear rolled-up trousers or a loin cloth, a point that I have already discussed in other publications, showing the deep level of Westernized cultural transformation of the Yamana/Yagan, at least when interacting with non-Indigenous observers.
This hints towards the possibility that at least some of the geometric designs of archaeological bone artefacts may have been representational too.
Although there is no written information about the other pigments, it is likely that the men also run out of white pigment (tumarapu), since most of the spirits designs covered the whole body with a white ground, prior to applying other motifs on top of it.
As noted by Gusinde: ‘women are aware, with more or less certainty, about the men’s deceitful activities, but, at the same time, they firmly hold on to the belief about the existence and activity of the spirits who act or are mentioned in the kina’ (Gusinde 1986, p. 1356; translated from the Spanish version).
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Acknowledgements
I am grateful to Oscar Moro Abadía and Manuel González Morales for inviting me to submit this paper. My gratitude goes also to Oscar and to four anonymous reviewers for their constructive input: it’s been a joy to revise my paper in light of their comments. Thanks also go to Stephen Shennan, Jeremy Tanner and Luis Orquera for their input at different stages of the research presented here. And a special thank you to Marcia-Anne Dobres for her kind help with my bibliography search. Authorized copies of all the ethnographic photos included in this paper are held at the Archivo Fotográfico de Imágenes Etnográficas de Fuego-Patagonia, based at the Asociación de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Buenos Aires, for non-profit academic, educational and cultural purposes. Finally, I gratefully acknowledge the constant support provided by Mr. Victor Vargas Filgueira, First Chancellor of the Comunidad Yagan Paiakoala de Tierra del Fuego.
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Fiore, D. The Art of Making Images: Technological Affordance, Design Variability and Labour Organization in the Production of Engraved Artefacts and Body Paintings in Tierra del Fuego (Southern South America). J Archaeol Method Theory 27, 481–510 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09474-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10816-020-09474-7