"Casanova-Gatto" Collection: contribution to the study of the history of research in the La Cuevagorge (Humahuaca, Jujuy) and the reconstruction of its past

Abstract

The history of the research carried out in the La Cueva gorge (Humahuaca department, Jujuy province), until the end of the 20th century, started with the conformation of a collection that resulted from explorations done in1931 by Eduardo Casanova and Santiago Gatto, commissioners of the National Museum of Natural History ?Bernardino Rivadavia?. The following article proposes an analysis of the history of the conformation of the ?Casanova-Gatto? collection, currently deposited in the Ethnographic Museum of Buenos Aires ?Juan B. Ambrosetti? and the Interdisciplinary Institute of Tilcara (both institutions dependent on the University of Buenos Aires). We will also assess the scope and limits of the supporting material (pottery, lithic, bones, metal) and the scarce documentary record regarding this collection, in order to reconstruct how it was formed, and assess its past and present role in the construction of narratives and/or interpretations about the past of the La Cueva gorge. Some of these narratives were based on Casanova´s original interpretation from the 1930s, despite the temporal and theoretical distance between those research instances. Other narratives interpreted, and still do, the past of the area from alternative perspectives. The latter stem both from changes in theoretical and methodological approaches and from new data gathered from the study of related archaeological sites and other collections assembled in the past, but only recently studied (for example, the collection prepared by Benjamín Muniz Barreto with archaeological material from the same area, using as basis the works of Karl Schuel in 1919). This article shows how the history of these investigations and their socio-historical disciplinary context influence the development and results of studies in the part of the Argentinian Northwest.