Water Representations in the Archaeological Landscape of Southern Ecuador

This paper is a research advance of the project "Materialities, Education and Public: Uses and Social Meanings of the Archaeological Heritage in Sigsig", whose purpose is focused on the identification of educational, communicational and political problems in terms of archaeology and archaeological heritage in southern Ecuador. This approach is based on the application of interviews and participatory mapping to social and cultural actors, as well as on the analysis of the written press between 2007 and 2021. The aim is to recognize how water interacts, is perceived and represented in archaeological contexts and sites under the notion of space and landscape. The results show a correspondence between the archaeological environment and the use of water, which takes magical, ritual and subsistence connotations, generating a corpus of social meanings.