Del botijo a la lechuza. La cerámica qom en el último siglo

Abstract

This article describes the most relevant attributes of qom pottery throughout the last century. The availability of vessels of different chronologies in museum collections, together with the oral memory of Chaco potters, is used to make a diachronic definition of the making and use of this technology. Furthermore, its association with different living contexts accounts for the active participation of ceramics in both functional and symbolic terms. On several occasions, a series of values are either actualized or rejected, depending on the intentions of the producing society. These values are reflected in the manufacturing technique, composition, surface treatment, morphology, and decoration. Moreover, the resulting assemblage evidences the contacts established by the Qom with other people from their life in the forest, at the beginning of the 20th century, to their settlement in recovered lands and in the urban periphery nowadays.