Riders on the storm: Rock art in the Atacama Desert (Northern Chile)

Abstract

Abstract Rider and mount iconography is common in the rock art of northern Chile but it is little investigated and poorly understood. This paper takes a new approach which focuses on the meaning and context of these equestrian images. It surveys the contexts in which equestrian imagery, particularly that associated with Apostle Santiago, is used and the meanings it invokes in colonial period illustrations and contemporary indigenous Andean cultures. These insights form the basis of a new interpretation of the equestrian rock art imagery of the Aiquina area of northern Chile. It is argued that the incorporation of equestrian iconography into rock art was not a simple process of importing exotic items and ideas but a complex process involving the appropriation of imagery and ideas and the renegotiation of their meanings in new cultural contexts.