Diaguita pottery moved from kilns to the cloud in two ways. Museums in Chile and abroad have photographed and 3-D scanned vessels from the Norte Chico (the Copiapó to Choapa valleys, made c. 900–1536 CE) and put them online. Diaguita potters, whom Chile recognised as an Indigenous people in 2006, now use those digital copies as reference for their own work. A good digital copy needs three things: accurate colour and shape, information about where the piece came from, and rules set by the community about who can use the files. The scanning hardware is cheap now. The hard parts are capturing the glossy painted surface correctly and getting the permissions right.
What makes Diaguita pottery recognisable?
Diaguita ceramics are low-fired earthenware. They have a polished red or cream slip with black, white and red geometric designs: step-frets, zigzags, chevrons and nested bands. The best-known forms are the jarro pato (an uneven “duck” jug), wide escudillas (bowls) and bowls with human or animal faces modelled on the rim. The Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino and the Museo Arqueológico de La Serena hold the largest public collections.
Archaeologists usually describe a sequence of stages. The earlier Molle and Las Ánimas cultures come first. Then come Early and Classic Diaguita phases, and finally a Diaguita-Inca phase after the Inca expanded into the region in the late 1400s. In that last phase potters adopted Inca forms such as the aryballos (a pointed-base storage jar) and mixed them with local designs. Exact dates differ between researchers and between valleys.
What did older accounts get wrong?
- Firing. Diaguita ware was fired in open or pit fires at earthenware temperatures, well below stoneware. Advice about thermocouples rated to 1,250 °C has nothing to do with these pots. Contemporary potters who want to measure a pit firing need a probe that survives direct flame. They don’t need a stoneware kiln controller.
- Language. Kakán is linked to the Diaguita-Calchaquí of northwest Argentina. It is extinct and was barely written down. Nobody knows what language the Chilean Diaguita spoke. “Diaguita” itself is a name the Spanish gave them.
- Provenance science. Linking a pot to a clay source mainly uses elemental analysis: portable XRF, neutron activation, or laser-ablation ICP-MS that reads trace and rare-earth elements. Strontium or lead isotopes are sometimes added. Whether the result narrows to a single river depends on how distinct the local geology is. A fixed “15 km radius” is not a general rule.
- Repatriation. Returns from foreign museums are mostly negotiated between institutions and governments. They are rarely won in court. Digital copies support those talks but don’t settle them legally.
Is the Diaguita revival real?
Yes. Chilean Law 20.117 (2006) amended the Indigenous Law (19.253) to add the Diaguita. That led to registered communities in the Huasco, Elqui and Limarí valleys, and a growing number of potters reviving the old designs. In the same region, Chile’s bailes chinos (ritual flute-and-dance brotherhoods) were added to UNESCO’s Representative List of Intangible Cultural Heritage in 2014. It’s a related example of a living tradition getting formal recognition.
For a working potter, museum objects behind glass are hard to study. A full-resolution digital model that can be rotated, measured and examined under raking light is more useful than a catalogue photograph. That is why digitisation matters to makers, not just to curators.
How do you actually digitise a painted earthenware vessel?
We shoot products and objects for clients, and polished slip is one of the harder surfaces to capture. Its shine creates hot spots that confuse photogrammetry software, and dark slip loses detail. What works:
- Cross-polarised lighting. Use polariser film on the lights and a circular polariser on the lens. This removes surface glare so the software sees the actual paint, not reflections. It costs about one to two stops of light, so plan for continuous LED panels or strobes.
- Coverage. A jug the size of a jarro pato typically needs 150–300 overlapping frames on a turntable, in two or three rings at different heights, plus a pass for the base. Narrow necks and handles need extra close-ups.
- Colour. Put a colour chart in the first frame of every set. Slip colour is diagnostic, and an uncalibrated red reads as a different ware.
- Software. Meshroom (AliceVision) is free and fine for single objects. Commercial packages are faster on large batches. Structured-light scanners such as the Artec Leo capture shape more quickly but still need a separate photo pass for accurate colour.
Realistic throughput for one trained operator is roughly 4–10 vessels a day, including setup. Most of the work is processing and cleanup afterwards, not shooting. What goes wrong most often: dark interiors that never get captured, shine left on rims, and files saved with no record of the object’s museum number.
What does a small digitisation project cost?
| Item | Typical range | Depends on |
|---|---|---|
| Photogrammetry kit (camera, macro lens, polarisers, LEDs, turntable) | Low thousands of USD if bought; less if existing kit is reused | Whether a museum or university lends equipment |
| Structured-light scanner | Rental by the week or month; purchase is far higher | Model, region, insurance |
| Processing workstation | A recent GPU-equipped desktop | Batch size and target resolution |
| Staff and community time | Usually the largest line | Consultation, translation, review cycles |
Chilean projects often combine museum budgets with national cultural funds and foundation grants. Budget community review as paid time, not volunteer goodwill.
Who controls the files once they exist?
This decides whether the project helps the community or just makes another copy it doesn’t control. The CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance (Collective benefit, Authority to control, Responsibility, Ethics) are the accepted framework. Local Contexts provides Traditional Knowledge and Biocultural labels that travel with the metadata and state community expectations. Standard licences can’t express those expectations.
Mukurtu CMS is free, open-source software built for Indigenous collections. It can restrict files by community, family or cultural protocol. Public platforms such as Sketchfab or the Smithsonian’s open 3-D portal are good for reaching an audience. Use them only for models the community has agreed to make public. Treat royalty schemes and blockchain “co-signing” with caution. They add complexity and settle no legal question that a signed agreement wouldn’t.
Does putting pottery online hurt contemporary potters?
Not by itself. The risk is copying: freely downloadable meshes can be 3-D printed and sold as souvenirs. Publishing lower-resolution public models, keeping full-resolution files under community control, and linking every public model to living makers turns visibility into commissions rather than competition. In our experience filming artisans, short process videos (hands, clay, firing) drive more direct enquiries than object scans alone. Buyers want the person behind the work, not just the object.
If you are planning a project, start with the agreement, not the camera. Agree with the community in writing which objects get scanned, who reviews the files and where each resolution is published. Then run a pilot on five to ten vessels to measure your real throughput before you write the budget.
