Technological elements and heritage objects are materialised social facts, and therefore underlie conceptions of the social collective, including aspects linked to the materials and the sources of those materials. Hence, given the dynamism of culture, the material culture of a population changes over time, as people interact with other cognitive systems and deal with different socio-environmental changes. The study of indigenous material culture, and in particular its materiality, requires an understanding of other human-nature relational models. Indigenous objects are imbued with an episteme of their own, different from that of the Anthropocene, which is expressed both symbolically and materially, and which involves other environmental rationalities that from a practical point of view imply alternative ways of inhabiting the territory, where most of the material sources are found (cf. Ingold 2007; Svampa 2019). For this reason, ethnobiological studies - which address the dynamic links between humans and nature - can contribute to a deeper understanding of the materiality of present and past objects by examining the technological choices of different social actors.
The Wichís are an indigenous people who live mainly in the central-western Chaco region of Argentina. Ancestral hunter-gatherers, they have their own language, Wichi-Lhamtes, and number around 50,000 people. Textiles made from the foliar fibres of "cháguar" (Bromelia spp.) are an art that the Wichí women have been practising since pre-Columbian times. Plagued by aesthetic choices that reflect their idiosyncrasy - reflected, for example, in their decorative motifs - cháguar textiles are also a symbol of female skill. Today, in the context of a capitalist market and as with other indigenous crafts in the country, these objects exhibit a hybrid nature as both exchange and identity goods (cf. Montani 2008). This results in the combined use of natural and industrial materials, although the craftswomen prefer to dye the cháguar threads with natural dyes from the forest, an inheritance transmitted by their mothers and grandmothers.
Nowadays, the Argentinean Gran Chaco is witnessing a massive devastation of its forests due to indiscriminate logging linked to the advance of the agricultural frontier, which could endanger the continuity of indigenous practices and their identity. In this context, this paper analyses the selection of natural dyes made by the weavers of the Wichí community of Tres Pozos, starting from an understanding of their local classification, then going through the perceived and highlighted material attributes - such as, for example, the aesthetic value of the different dyes - and finally linking the selection with the current way of inhabiting the community territory. Special emphasis is placed on the experiential nature of learning the practice of dyeing, which is essentially mute, by imitation and innovation. The focus here is on the importance of knowledge and the ability to move throughout the territory, which makes it possible to obtain quality dyes that give the desired aesthetic results. It concludes with a reflection on the possibilities for the continuity of the current dyeing practice for future generations.
Keywords: deforestation, ethnobiology, Gran Chaco, indigenous peoples, natural dyes.
Ingold, T. 2007. Materials against materiality. Archaeological Dialogues 14 (1) 1-16.
Svampa, M. 2019. The Anthropocene as diagnosis and paradigm. Global readings from the South. Latin American Utopia and Praxis 24(84): 33-54.
Montani, R. 2008. Solid metaphors of gender: women and weaving among the Wichí. In: Hirsch, S. (ed.), Mujeres indígenas en la Argentina. Cuerpo, trabajo y poder, pp. 153-177. Editorial Biblos.
Anahí Herrera Cano holds a PhD in Biological Sciences from the University of Buenos Aires and is a postdoctoral researcher at the Grupo de Etnobiología del Instituto de Micología y Botánica, CONICET-UBA, Buenos Aires, Argentina. She specialises in the ethnobiology of the Wichí and Pilagá indigenous peoples of the central-western Argentinean Chaco, with emphasis on material culture.
Instagram: grupo_etnobiologia_fceyn_uba
The study of indigenous material culture requires an understanding of other human-nature relational models, which implies alternative ways of inhabiting the territory. In this sense, ethnobiological studies contribute to a deeper understanding of the materiality of different objects, providing information on, for example, the symbolic and practical selection criteria of materials. This contribution analyses the selection and procurement of natural dyes for the dyeing of cháguar (Bromelia spp.) fibres among Wichí women in the semi-arid Chaco region of Argentina, linking it to changes in the way they move through the territory due to the socio-environmental transformations of recent decades.