Climatic changes and hunter-gatherer populations: archaeozoological trends in

RINDEL DIEGO, BOURLOT TIRSO, GOÑI RAFAEL AND BELARDI JUAN.

París

Congreso; 11th International Conference of ICAZ; 2010

International Council for Archaeozoology

Archaeofaunal studies in Patagonia used to held a site-focus mostly related to the evidence provided by rockshelters. However a regional perspective as the one employed in this presentation, besides considering open air sites allows to identify trends and patterns that could remain in the shadows when just a microregional scale is used. Climatic changes along the Late Holocene (last 2500 years BP) were very different to the preceeding times, overall during the Mediaeval Climatic Anomaly (ca. 900 years BP). It is proposed that lower lacustrine basins were residentialy used by hunter-gatherer populations while the high and seasonal basaltic plateaus show an archaeological signal related to a logistic strategy. Given so, it is expected that the archaeofaunal regional record obtained in the Perito Moreno Nacional Park, Pampa del Asador, the Strobel Plateau and Cardiel, Tar-San Martín and Salitroso-Posadas lake basins should follow these other archaeological signatures. Patterns obtained show that taxonomic structure, skeletal part frequencies, and processing evidencies are in agreement with the proposal. The archaeofaunal record also highlights the occupational history of a newly available space like the sand dunes.