Three Gazes. A Comparison of the Hunting, Fishing and Gathering Artefacts of the First Nations of Tierra del Fuego, through the Archaeological, Photographic and Written Records (16th to 20th Centuries)

This paper presents a comparative analysis of the information about hunting, fishing and gathering artefacts produced/used by the First Nations of Tierra del Fuego, via the combined use of three sources of information about their past: archaeological, photographic and written records, from the 16th to the 20th centuries. The data for the Selk'nam and Yagan cases are firstly presented, by assessing the types of artefacts, tasks and genders involved in each case, in order to identify intra-society trends. Both cases are then compared by focusing on each activity, in order to assess similarities, differences and contrasting trends at an inter-society level. The integration of the three records and both analytical levels provides results which allow inferences about the agencies underlying the production/use of material culture artefacts by each Fuegian society.