Political, social and economic changes in relation to fishing and extraction of guano on the coast of Arica and Tarapacá: Sixteenth to early nineteenth century

Abstract

The littoral of the Atacama Desert (North of Chile, South America) has been a source of energy and an environment relevant to the social life of prehistoric and colonial populations. Fish and other seafood were key products in the human diet. Moreover, guano (a natural fertilizer of marine origin) was also crucial for agricultural development and economic and symbolic interchanges. Hunting and collecting seafood encouraged the use of technologies and tools. These activities are reflected in the existence of complex political organizations and cultural development. Access to marine resources depended on global or imperial political changes occurring in the Andean and American social landscape. This article offers an overview based on historical sources related to the transformations in the marine economic exploitation from the Tawantinsuyu (Inca rule) to late colonial times and the early nineteenth-century. This article analyses, from an ethnohistorical point of view, the process of human adaptation, as well the relationship of power that were part of the extraction activities in the marine landscape.