Montículos, jerarquía social y horticultura en las sociedades indígenas del Delta del río Paraná (Argentina)

BONOMO M.; POLITIS, G.; GIANOTTI, C.

Latin American Antiquity

Society for American Archaeology

Año: 2011 vol. 22 p. 297 - 333

1045-6635

Over the last two decades, there has been a significant increase in archaeological information on the South American Lowlands.However, there are still gaps in our understanding of this area and many regions remain understudied. One of these regions is the Delta of the Paraná River, which has been systematically investigated only very recently. In this article, we present a critical review of the existing archaeological evidence and the results obtained from our new investigations in the Upper Delta of the Paraná River. We discuss patterns of use of space during the Late Holocene and the basic cultural patterns. In this context, we focus on the construction of human-made earthen mounds (locally called cerritos) and we consider them in an extra-regional context that incorporates evidence from various cerrito sites in Southern Brazil and Uruguay. In both areas, the earthen mounds are abundant and are the subject of a current debate among archaeologists. As a corollary, we explore the archaeological and historical evidence that suggest the development of a certain degree of social hierarchy.