The small Archaeological and Ethnographic Museum sits inside Parque El Loa and is the best place in Calama to get a sense of the deep human history of the surrounding desert. The collection covers the Atacameño people of the Loa basin from pre-ceramic times to the colonial period: stone tools, woven baskets, fragments of textile, pre-Inca pottery, and a handful of mummies and burial offerings preserved by the local dryness.
It is a museum on a municipal scale, not a national one — you can walk through it in 45 minutes — but the explanations are clear and the objects are good. Combined with a walk in the park, it is the most worthwhile single thing to do in central Calama.