Arqueología del arte rupestre de los Andes Centralescontextos paisajísticos, culturales y temporales de las manifestaciones pintadas del Valle de Nepeña, Ancash, Perú

Abstract

In the Nepeña Valley located in the Ancash department in Peru, research focused on pre-Hispanic monumental sites in the Lower and Middle Valley has a long history. However, the studies carried out in the Alta basin are very scarce and the antecedents in painted rock art as an object of analysis are scarce. For this reason and from the consideration of rock art as a material evidence of the past that we can approach from the archaeological discipline, the objective of this thesis is to contextualize it spatially, functionally and temporarily. The journey through the sub-basin of the Loco River allowed the documentation of numerous sites with pictographs, which are analyzed from the theoreticalmethodological approaches of landscape archeology and semiotics. The different scales of analysis allow to discern the models of occupation of the territory, mobility and interconnectivity between the ecozones that communicate the coast and the mountains, through this valley. In addition, they enable the proposal of a vast chrono-stylistic sequence that ranges from the Archaic period to the Late Intermediate. The rock art of the sub-basin of the Loco river, in the upper Nepeña basin, contributes to configure this transverse space to the mountain range, as essential in the cultural development of the Central-Andean pre-Hispanic societies.