The relationships of rock art and archaeofaunas in the central patagonian plateau

MIOTTI LAURA; CARDEN NATALIA

Thaphonomy and Zooarchaeology in the Southern Cone of South America

British Archaeological Series, 1610.

Lugar: London, U.K.; Año: 2007; p. 203 - 218

The objective of this work is to relate the archaeofaunistic information to the rock art in theDeseado Plateau region, with the aim of visualizing in this way the attitudes of people towards animals during the prehispanic past. Along this Indian occupation, certain changes are observed in the archaeofaunistic record, therefore, the goal is to know if there was a co-variation between the appropriation of resources and the artistic manifestations. In this work, certain changes of attitudes can be mentioned, at least as a hypothesis. In this sense, the key questions are: How are the changes of the artistic expressions manifested along space and time? And which are the attitudes and relations between people and animals, especially those preferred to hunt and consume? To answer these questions, two kinds of analysis were used for these two assemblages of data: statistical and spatial, both intrasite and intersite.This methodological approach, considering two aspects of the material culture which have been generally treated as separate in the Argentinean archaeology, can yield relevant information that can allow to reach higher theoretical levels, integrating the economical,social and symbolic aspects of the relation between man and his surrounding.