Bernardo was born into a hard working rural family of very limited means on August 19, 1959. He was the youngest of 15 children born to his parents Alejandro del Carmen Arriaza Soto and Betsabe in Coltauco, a small village in the community of Rancagua, Chile. Bernardo has two children, Victor Alejandro and Paloma Marina Arriaza. He attended elementary school in Coltauco, and attended a Jesuitboarding school in Santiago that taught him discipline, he finished high school in Rancagua. Bernardo started medical studies in the U de Chile, but had to drop out due to financial issues. He then put himself through an affordable degree at the U de Norte, and later on obtained a Bachelor's degree in Physical Anthropology. As an undergraduate he was employed as an assistant toLate paleopathologist Marvin Allison and that is when Bernardo first met and became intrigued by the Chinchorro Culture. Years later he obtained Master's and then Doctoral degrees in Physical Anthropology from Arizona State University.
Career highlights.
Arriaza has more than 70 papers in scientific journals of high impact factor, is the author of 10 books on the first populations of northern Chile, some with collaborators, including five of a scientific nature, two on scientific dissemination and three specialized catalogs. Three of these have been republished. Participates in 14 book chapters, he also has 50 scientific presentations at national and international scientific meetings. Has participated as a researcher in eight projects funded by , four as a principal investigator, and four as co-investigator, He has also participated in FONDART, NSF, FIC and National Geographic Society grants, among others. He has been scientific advisor on the Chinchorro Culture on 14 television documentaries including Discovery Channel and National Geographic. In 1984 Arriaza wrote in the journal Chungara, his first work on the Chinchorro Culture in collaboration with other academics from the University of Tarapacá, ten years later, in 1994 he published in the Chungara a classification on the Chinchorro mummies, typology that today is widely used by the scientific and general community. A year later, in 1995 he wrote an important article for National Geographic Magazine on the Chinchorro mummies, which was translated into several languages, including Japanese, French and Portuguese, thus helping to promote the Chinchorro mummies at international level, the same year he wrote the book "Beyond Death: The Chinchorro Mummies of Ancient Chile". Smithsonian Institution Press. Washington, D.C. which was later translated, in 2003, into Spanish by Marlene Onate, Master of Art, University of Nevada Las Vegas and published in Chile by the Universidad de Chile, prestigious Editorial Universitaria Press. In 2002 with the collaboration of Vivien Standen he wrote the book "Mummies, death and ancestral rites". University of Tarapacá. the work was published by the Editorial Universitaria Press in 2008. In 2005 he wrote his environmental hypothesis debating why the Chinchorro developed their artificial mummification practices, four years later, in 2009 he published with Vivien Standen "Catalogue Chinchorro Mummies". University of Tarapacá Press. In 2014 Arriaza published with Nuria Sanz and Vivien Standen "The Chinchorro Culture: A comparative perspective". The archaeology of the earliest human mummification. UNESCO, in 2016 he published with Vivien Standen "Chinchorro Culture: Past and Present". University of Tarapaca Press. In 2016 he has been nominated for the Chilean National History Award. His last interviews were by the Chilean Magazine "Qué Pasa and by the newspaper "" but he's been consulted and cited since 1994
Community involvement and outreach.
Arriaza's involvement with the community began in 2005 with the project explore program: "Understand the desert so that we are players in the development of our region", an activity held in conjunction with Aricahigh schools. A year before, in 2004, he was involved in the creation of the website , subsequently transformed to . In 2008 he was part of the publishing of the cartoon"Arqueonautas: The Chinchorro Vol. 1". Financed by , also in 2008 he participated as main scientific advisor in the documentary "Chinchorro: 3,000 years before King Tut" by Herman Mondaca Raitieri Danús and Andrés Vargas. In 2009 he won the FONDART grant on teaching materials on Chinchorro which was delivered to schools in the region of Arica and Parinacota.
