How can pottery-related traditions connect to questions of Diaguita-Kakán identity, territory, and heritage preservation?

The project “Aticks Ypachay” embarks on these questions by working with an underdocumented collection from the region of Coquimbo, Chile, at the British Museum.

Diaguita-Kakán ceramics from the collection of the British Museum. Photo: Lasta Anku Association. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

“Aticks Ypachay” (Reviving Mother Nature;Kakán) is a collaborative project between Chilean indigenous Diaguita-Kakán association Lasta Anku, Diaguita- Kakán researcher Vicente Antonio Alfaro Norton, SDCELAR, and the collections from the British Museum. The project aims to document, study, and connect a pottery collection from the region of Coquimbo with Diaguita-Kakán communities and potters in the Limarí province, Coquimbo, Chile. This collective endeavour is focused on the study and documentation of ceramic materials in participation with local potters and researchers, creating new meanings around their history, production, and cultural relevance. With a primary focus on understanding the material practices and reviving the traditional knowledge associated with pottery production, the vigorous involvement of local traditional Diaguita-Kakán authorities allows to situate these ancestral ceramics within their living present.    

The Diaguita-Kakán

Diaguita-Kakán are indigenous peoples that live in the territory of the Norte Chico in Chile between the 3rd and 5th regions. This includes the transverse valleys, coasts and mountains of Copiapó, Huasco, Elqui, Limarí, Choapa, Aconcagua, and Mapocho, territories inhabited for at least 12,000 years. The continuous existence and re-enactment of material traditions are where Diaguitas connect their heritage with their ancestral cosmology. Diaguitas still practice traditional agriculture, the natural medicine of the meicas (healers), pirqueneria (mining), Bailes Chinos (Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, UNESCO 2014), gastronomy, stonework (unique stones in Abya Yala such as lapis lazuli and combarbalita, the national stone of Chile and unique to Combarbalá), fishing, weaving, astronomy, and Andean transhumance. In that way, the project is meant as a part of a larger cultural context, where the depth of the Diaguita-Kakán culture is explored from its material heritage, discernible in the British Museum collection of funerary and household vessels. 

“The duck jug in the British Museum is from the lasta (our) Limarí Nahao (territory). It’s an important and beautiful artifact, which is why it’s much more than just mog (clay). It’s a union of the entire territory with its materials, its techniques, its secrets, and the whole of the ancestral Diaguita-Kakán culture and worldview.”
— Lasta Anku, 2025

Diaguita-Kakán duck jug (mojchi’ck), Am1939,08.2, Photo: Lasta Anku Association. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Ceramic traditions in the Limarí Valley can be traced back to the first agricultural and pastoral communities of the area, the Molle culture, an ancestral Diaguita-Kakán peoples who inhabited the territory from 300BCE – 700 CE, during the early ceramic period. From this period onwards, there are two basic types of pottery: the gritty ware used for cooking and domestic purposes, and decorated, ritual sacred ceramics used in ceremonial, ritual, and mortuary contexts. The subsequent cultural phase, known as Las Animas, began around 700 CE with the introduction of polychrome geometric designs painted on the interior and exterior of wide bowls. Around 1000 CE, new forms of pottery and decorations began to appear, with complex and infinitely diverse geometric designs in what became known as the Diaguita culture. These bands of red, white, black, and sometimes ochre geometries were painted across bowls, vases, urns, and different forms of jars, often incorporating anthropomorphic and zoomorphic designs. These chronological categories are not as limited as they were once thought to be, with a continuation of the oldest ceramic traditions of the first potters evident in the present. Towards the end of the 15th century, the Limarí was forcefully incorporated into the Tawantinsuyu, the Incan Empire, which saw the introduction of Cuzqueñan pottery forms that utilised local Diaguita motifs.

Diaguita-Kakán pottery vessels, Am1939,08.10, Am1939,08.2, Am1939,08.11, Photo: Lasta Anku Association. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

By articulating the Indigenous association based in Combarbalá, Limarí, Chile, and the collections of the British Museum, the project is a bridge where the Diaguita-Kakán bring their knowledge, traditions, and expertise in pottery-making into the Museum. As a result, the collaborative documentation and study created insightful ideas into Diaguita’s material culture, its oral traditions, and its contemporary presence in today’s Chile.  

With this collaboration with the Lasta Anku Educational Association, the project will produce pedagogical material for Diaguita-Kakán teachers to use in schools, centred around the relevance of local sources of raw material for pottery production, the changes in its use across time, and their journey to the British Museum through the collection. Aticks Ypachay, then, explores the symbolic meaning of pottery and its makings in the past and present with a special focus on natural resources. These outputs, likewise, contribute to highligh the role that ancestral ceramics have in visualising and strengthening the territorial struggles of Diaguita-Kakán communities in the face of climate change and increasing extractive activities in the Limarí Valley. 

Photos from the Lasta Anku Seminar II “From Museums to a Live Peoples: Heritage. Identity and Human Rights [De los museos al Pueblo Vivo: Patrimonio, Identidad y DDHH]. Monte Patria, Limarí, Coquimbo. June 30 – July 1, 2023. From left to right: Jenifer Araya Flores, Vicente Alfaro Norton, Alexis Escobar Muñoz and Katherine Galleguillos Zepeda. First time photos of the Cruz Montt collection at the British Museum were shared with communities.

Ceremony, rituals, and pottery 

Diaguita-Kakán peoples have been creating ceramics and sacred artefacts using local materials since ancient times. Domestic ceramics and ceremonial ones have different purposes. Ceremonial ceramics are found in cemeteries and are distinguished by their geometries, colours, forms, and precise decorations. These characteristics, representing Diaguita-Kakán spirituality, connect to deities and ancestors in the sky and on the ground. The ceramics are much more than material artefacts. Each ceramic object holds the soul and essence of an ancestor.

Ceremonial ceramics are used in rituals and sacred ceremonies, offering traditional foods, seeds, liquors, flowers, sacred tree parts, herbs, minerals, stones, and water to divinities like the moon, sun, stars, and earth. Fiestas, important dates in the Andean calendar, include solstices, the Southern Cross night (May 3rd), and the first days of November to honour ancestors. Bailes Chinos and songs to the divine accompany fiestas. Smaller local fiestas are held during harvest to commemorate local divinities and community life. Diaguita-Kakán peoples continue this ceremonial and ritual use across Norte Chico.

Ceramics, the finest and most detailed, accompanied ancestors in their tombs as sacred funerary artefacts. They held the most valued and strongest aspects of the ancestors’ lives, reflecting their worldly existence. Burial contents included teeth, umbilical cords, hair, jewellery, textiles, pipes, spindles, tools, entheogenic substances, and sometimes ancestor remains. Part of Diaguita-Kakán spirituality upholds that at physical death, a person is lowered into a rest in the ground, and within ceramics identity and essence are kept, acting as an eternal reminder in the earth of the individual within their community, their territory, and the universe. Eventually, the ancestor will ascend to the river in the sky to become a star. The sacred ceramics were created to awaken the knowledge, which is deep within every Diaguita-Kakán to continue living in reciprocity as part of a community in a territory as it was in pre-Colombian times. It is kept in oral tradition that these cemeteries and their sacred contents maintain the land’s fertility and surround it with encanto, or enchantment, which allows for flora, fauna, and spirits to live harmoniously with the community.

Meicas (healers) uphold that ceramics were used in sacred healing ceremonies, and have been used continuously in different forms into modern times. In bowls, plant medicines were consumed, as well as psychoactive plants like wachuma and chamiko for shamanic journeys. The geometric ornamentations are also related to the visual effects of consuming psychoactive plant medicines. Sahumerios (incensing rites) can also be done in bowls.

Meica (healer) Maria Angelica Araya Jimenez, Monte Patria.

Diaguita-Kakán painted geometric designs are an aesthetic realm of their own. There are hundreds of different designs which begin with a single unit, which are then repeated, or rotated, or reflected in different ways. These designs are deeply aligned with Diaguita-Kakán identity and its existence within the territory but are also connected to shamanic aspects of the ancestral culture.  The lower part of Diaguita-Kakán ceramics is usually left unpainted. This is interpreted as being symbolic of the Ipachay (Mother Nature) as it is in the earth where things rest and where growth begins, so above the unpainted section is where the complex geometry is painted.

Climate change and pottery production

The ecological context of the Limarí region is a relevant angle of this project as it is a zone impacted by climate change and extractivism. Lasta Anku’s fieldwork in Chile, conducted between September 2022 and primarily in July 2024 for SDCELAR, has shed light on how Diaguita’s pottery production connects ancestral spirituality, traditional knowledge and the use of natural resources, now endangered, with ceramic-making. Pottery production is embedded and depends on natural resources such as clay – tuturako (river reed flowers)-, water, plants, and minerals for creating pigments. Diaguita-Kakán ceramics are inextricably tied to the nature in the community’s land. The vessels, therefore, are a tangible testament to the Diaguita-Kakán close relationships with their territory. 

Diaguita-Kakán educator Felix Honores Tello in San Pedro de Pichasca, Rio Hurtado (left). Limarí River, Alcones, Limarí Valley, Chile. Photo: Lasta Anku Association (right).

“Aticks Ypachay” converges different traditions of pottery-making, highlighting the importance of economic and ecological adaptations. Lasta Anku and SDCELAR connected with over 20 potters in rural and urban contexts across the Limarí, with three potters (Mojkaka’ey) specifically chosen for this project for their trajectory within the Diagutia-Kakán community to discover new stories behind this material tradition: Rosa Elena Zepeda Araya (Combarbalá) who works with ancestral techniques and natural materials from the territory in her studio, Taller Llankay; Moisés Villalobos Vicencio (Chingay, Combarbalá) who traditionally creates ceramics in a rural environment, within the space of transhumance; and Meica (healer) Maria Angelica Araya Jimenez (Monte Patria) who constructs ceramics that have a ceremonial and medicinal purpose. Each Mojkaka’ey works with ceramics in different scenarios, opening multiple points of entry when thinking about pottery production, and how it relates to its context while also being in dialogue with a wider Diaguita-Kakán historic culture and legacy. By bringing their plural voices, their diverse perspectives complement and create a more complex and enriching documentation of the vessels in the British Museum. 

Jars (mojchi’ck) made by Rosa Zepeda Araya, Llankay Workshop, Combarbalá. Photo: Lasta Anku Association.

The Collection

The Carlos Cruz Montt collection at the British Museum, from where this ceramic collection was acquired, is almost all from the Diaguita period (900CE-1536CE). The collection is made up almost entirely of ceremonial and mortuary ceramics. Only one of the vessels is from another phase – Am1939,08.1 – probably (300BCE – 800CE), due to its polished finish and engraved decoration. Some ceramics – Am1939,08.4 & 5 – are from infants’ graves, reflected by their ‘shoe pot’ shape and their relationship with motherhood and nourishment. Other vessels – such as Am1939,08.8 & Am1939,08.7 – show cosmological aspects such as the importance of certain animals and the role of the shaman in the community.

Vicente Alfaro Norton visiting the Diaguita-Kakán collection. Photo: Santiago Valencia Parra. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Collaborative Documentation

Following several community meetings between the Lasta Anku Association, project’s principal investigator Vicente Alfaro Norton, and SDCELAR curators, Lasta Anku conducted fieldwork in the Limarí Valley in July 2024, aimed at identifying key outputs as well as engaging with potters and interested collectives of the Diaguita-Kakán communities. In April and October 2023, Vicente was hosted by the SDCELAR team to visit the British Museum to conduct a preliminary study and photograph the Coquimbo collections, being accompanied by a remote visit of the materials held online with members of the Lasta Anku association, as other community members.  

By engaging with the collection, Vicente was able to fully document and analyze the ceramic vessels from the region of Coquimbo, studying their material composition and recurring visual iconography, which is still found today in contemporary pottery production. This visit to the collection also allowed Vicente to identify two new Diaguita-Kakán ceramics (Am1939,08.34 & Am1939,08.44), which correspondingly come from the Coquimbo region and originally were part of the Cruz Montt collection.  

This visit was a turning point in the project delivery, as it created the research material for the next stages of work around the collection. Accordingly, in December 2024 SDCELAR welcomed Rosa Zepeda Araya. Rosa, a Diaguita member of Lasta Anku from Combarbalá in the Limarí province, touched and interacted with archaeological ceramic vessels for the very first time in her journey as a traditional potter.  This visit to the BM’s collections deposit on Orsman Road arose a great deal of new information and understanding from the Diaguita-Kakán collection.  

Rosa Zepeda and Vicente Alfaro visiting the Diaguita-Kakán collection. Photo: Santiago Valencia Parra.

With Rosa’s knowledge and ability, Lasta Anku could study the collection, assessing the materials used to create pottery, the intricacies of Diaguita-Kakán geometric forms, and the state of conservation of the ceramics. During this visit, Lasta Anku identified three new bowls from Coquimbo which were not documented as being so. One, Am1939.8.38, belongs to an earlier cultural phase in comparison to the grand part of the collection, making it the first ceramic of the culture phase Las Animas in a UK museum.   

 Apart from the collection from the Coquimbo region, Rosa and Vicente were also able to interact with pottery from the north, south, and west of the southern cone region. To the north, Diaguita-Kakán ceramics from Copiapó were studied, noting the influence of Incan forms (Am1855,1211.52) as well as the unique styles of the territory (Am1977,35.3). South of Coquimbo, bowls, and jugs (Am1939,08.33 & Am1939,08.37) from Aconcagua and the Mapocho valleys were analysed to understand similarities and differences between the pottery of diverse groups of Diaguita-Kakán peoples.  

Pottery vessels from The British Museum collection, Am1939.8.38, Am1855,1211.52, Am1977,35.3. Photo: Santiago Valencia Parra. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Lastly, ceramics and two rare musical instruments from the Diaguita-Kakán territories across the Andes from Coquimbo in the Northwest of Argentina were studied. Lasta Anku also engaged with a large polychrome bowl from Tucumán (Am1997, Q.1060) which has been ‘ritually killed’, connecting this mortuary tradition with ceramics from Coquimbo, Copiapó, and Aconcagua (see Copiapó bottle and Mapocho jug) which have also been ‘killed’. Further connecting the two territories was the presence of ‘owl faces’ on pieces from both Coquimbo (Am1939,08.1) and Catamarca (Am1920, –.90), a motif that relates to local oral traditions regarding the ability of shamans to transmute into owls. A surprise find in the collections engagement were two ocarinas, one stone (Am1895,0614.2), the other clay (Am1895,0614.3), from Jujuy, which will be recreated by the Diguita-Kakán in both combarbalita stone and clay to compare the sounds with wind instruments found in Coquimbo.   

Pottery vessels from The British Museum collection, Am1997, Q.1060, Am1920, –.90. Photo: Santiago Valencia Parra. © The Trustees of the British Museum.

Further Connections: Cambridge Trip  

On their last day of the visit to the UK, Lasta Anku coordinated with the Cambridge Museum of Anthropology & Archaeology a trip to their storage facility to see another large part of the Cruz Montt Collection. Accompanied by the Alfaro family, Diaguita-Kakán residents in the UK, Rosa was able to see a never-before-seen collection. The collection of 33 ceramics is made up of a small cohort from a cemetery in San Julián, next to the River Limarí, as well as pieces from different cultural phases like Las Animas, Diaguita, and Diaguita-Inca. The time with the collections in Cambridge also included a video meeting to show the collection to Lasta Anku and community members in the Limarí. In all, alongside The British Museum’s and Pitt Rivers Cruz Montt collections from Coquimbo, the total of Diaguita-Kakán ceramics in England totals 72 identified artefacts.    

This was not all for the visit to Cambridge. After a shared typical day-trip lunch from the Limarí with the Alfaro family and Senior Curator from Cambridge Dr. Jimena Lobo Guerrero Arenas, Rosa directed a pottery workshop with 14 students made up of museum staff and students at the University of Cambridge. Rosa, using traditional techniques and simple materials, guided the class through the steps of making Diaguita anthropomorphic shoe jars from Coquimbo.   

This was a great success in the continuing association between the Diaguita-Kakán communities and the Cambridge MAA, and an excellent space for building relationships between institutions, collections, and communities. 

A Diaguita-Kakán flag depicting the Southern Cross constellation in the style of rock art from Coquimbo, as installed by Vicente and Rosa during their visit to the British Museum’s collection store. Photo: Santiago Valencia Parra.

Lasta Anku Educational Material: Anakita and the Duck Jug

Lasta Anku, as an association of traditional educators, created an educational book  in partnership with Diaguita-Mapuche illustrator Amancai Sofia Valderrama Leal about the life story of a jarro pato (duck jug) from the Limarí, accompanied by a range of activities. As part of the mandatory “Language and Culture of The Ancestral Original Peoples of Chile” subject in Chilean schools, the book is aimed at 8-10-year-old school children, and is formed from the project’s investigation, including interviews with different potters and traditional authorities from around the Limarí. The book includes aspects of ancestral Diaguita-Kakán life, family, and community, as well as sections dedicated to the territory, pottery, a glossary in Kakán, and the jarro pato at the British Museum. It ends with the journey of the jarro pato from the Limarí to London, and its reunion with the Diaguita-Kakán peoples.

Access the resource here, or tap the image below.

Anakita and the Duck Jug. Voices from the clay. Lasta Anku Association & Amancai Sofia Valderrama Leal.

“Together we have traveled through space, from Limarí to the British Museum in London, and through time, from pre-Columbian times to the present day. With this, we learned about the ancestral Diaguita-Kakán culture and territory of Limarí, as well as the materials and techniques used to create pottery. Then, we immersed ourselves in the feeling-thinking of Diaguita-Kakán spirituality (…). Finally, we saw how the duck jug (…) was rediscovered by its people after more than eight decades.”
— Lasta Anku, 2025

Knowledge holders that participated in this investigation:

Felix Honores Tello, Moisés Villalobos Vicencio, Maria Angelica Araya Jimenez, Rosa Zepeda Araya, Katherine Galleguillos Zepeda, Jenifer Araya Flores, Alexis Escobar Muñoz, Irlanda Rojo Cabrera, Diaguita-Kakán communities in the Limarí Province, Coquimbo Region, Norte Chico, Chile.

Colaborators:

	Lasta Anku Association The Lasta Anku Indigenous Association brings together Diaguita Communities and Educators from Limarí province, Coquimbo, Chile. Its objective is the cultural revitalization of the Diaguita-Kakán people, making visible their worldview, mother tongue – Kakán, ancestral traditions, and culture. They began working inside and outside schools in 2019 when the opportunity was presented to Diaguita educators through the subject of “Language and Culture of The Ancestral Original Peoples of Chile”, a mandatory course in all educational establishments in the country.
	Rosa Zepeda Araya Rosa is a traditional potter from Combarbalá, Limarí province, with over 30 years of experience. She began her training practising with her mother and grandmother. Over the years, Rosa has learned crucial aspects of the pottery preparation and production process, including the long preparation of natural clay, as well as how to make pigments from raw materials from nature, and the creation of suitable fires for firing the pottery. Rosa has attended many national craft events in Chile, including workshops, exhibitions, as well as Diaguita gatherings in her capacity as a traditional potter. Through ‘Aticks Ipachay‘, she has been able to connect with the Diaguita-Kakán collections for the first time and give a pottery workshop in Cambridge, UK. Rosa is an expert in the ancient tradition of Diaguita-Kakán pottery, and her trip to the UK provided her with valuable learnings in her mastery of clay.
	Vicente Alfaro Norton Vicente was born in Antofagasta (Kakán – “pueblo del alto cobre”) in the North of Chile to a Diaguita father from the Limari Valley and a British mother. Both sides of his family have fueled his convictions not only as an investigator but also as a person. On his father’s side are generations of healers, chinos, agriculturalists, and miners from the community of Alcones in the lower Limarí. On his mother’s side, he is a fifth-generation archaeologist. Since 2022 he has conducted research in the Limarí; now holding charge of emissary for the Limarí in documentation and repatriation processes of Diaguita-Kakán heritage in Europe and North America for communities in the territory.
	Alexis Escobar Muñoz Liu (chief; Kakán) of the Kaikama Tatul Guayaquil community of Monte Patria, president of the provincial Lasta Anku Association, traditional educator, and life-long Chino dancer of the Southern Cross (UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity 2014).
	Katherine Galleguillos Zepeda Kuachi’cka (she who teaches; Kakán), and li (chief; Kakán) of the Gasta Vanato Diaguita community in Combarbalá, from matriarchal ancestry including transhumants, meicas, pirquineros in the Andes and the secano (dry-lands) of the Diaguita-Kakán peoples, secretary of the Lasta Anku Association and traditional educator.
	Jenifer Araya Flores Secretary of the Gasta Vanato Diaguita community of Combarbalá, vice-president of the Lasta Anku Association, traditional educator, and member of an ancestral lineage that still works Chile’s national stone and unique in the world to Combarbalá, combarbalita.
	Amancai Valderrama Leal   Diaguita-Mapuche illustrator whose work represents the worldview and spirituality of her ancestors through illustrations. She is a member of a lineage of midwives, healers, and herbalists throughout time. She seeks to connect art with her identity, family history, and cultural heritage. She is a transhumant Diaguita lineage from the Norte Chico and a Mapuche lineage from Vilcun, Niagara.

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