Iconografía de la cultura Tolita: Lecturas del discurso ideológico en las representaciones figurativas del Desarrollo Regional

María Fernanda Ugalde

doi:10.34780/nd2t-j23x

Iconografía de la cultura Tolita: Lecturas del discurso ideológico en las representaciones figurativas del Desarrollo Regional

https://doi.org/10.34780/nd2t-j23x

Authors

María Fernanda Ugalde https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0172-3940

Synopsis

Which people appear in the iconography of Tolita culture? What do these figures represent? Are they naturalistic representations of the daily life of this society or can they be seen as metaphors of an ideological-religious system? What is the nature of the iconography? What aspects of society does it express, is it possible to obtain information about its social organisation? To what extent can iconographic and archaeological research be combined to get closer to knowledge about this society?

These are some of the questions that this work aims to answer. For this purpose, as many finds as possible were collected and classified according to uniform criteria, as a preliminary step to the analysis.

Under the premise that figurative representations are to be understood as carriers of coded messages, semiotics is used as a working tool to understand the structural system underlying the images.

Our reading of the figurative objects of Tolita culture presented here leads us to reconstruct a complex society with an active political life. We assume that certain groups in this society succeeded in coming to power through ideological manipulation, starting with the questioning of ancient values and ending with the legitimisation as rulers of persons claiming a mystical lineage. This reading is certainly only a fragment of the big book hidden in these symbolic images. It is a first contribution to an immense field that is almost completely unexplored in the case of the pre-Hispanic cultures of present-day Ecuador.