CAVES AND ROCKSHELTERS: MEAN HUNTER-GATHERER LANDMARKS AT VOLCANIC LANDSCAPE IN EXTRA-ANDEAN PATAGONIA

LAURA MIOTTI

LISBON, PORTUGAL

Simposio; UISPP – XV CONGRESS, SEPTEMBER 4-9, 2006; 2005

UISPP International Congress Comittee

The Deseado Massif (Santa Cruz Province) is one of the most important areas which since XIX century until today had contributed with excellent palaeoenvironmental and archaeological information about the first human settlements in New World. Caves and rockshelters are the main places were archaeological data were found. So, these special loci hold not only value referred to cultural materials (pre and post-Hispanic periods) across the millenniums and centuries, but also paleoecological and taphonomic information. A lot of caves present extended stratigraphic and archaeological sequences, allow us inferring the different histories about the human colonization, mobility, subsistence, massive extinction of pleistocenic megafauna, relationship between first colonizer and the animals, and symbolic issue related to art, death and use of space. This work details some of the main archaeological contexts excavated and studies developed by our research team over fifteen years involving: Piedra Museo, Aguada del Cuero, Los Toldos, and La Primavera localities. The final aim is to present a regional model of the process of colonization and consolidation the area during last 13 ky BP and discuss in base on their data the changes in the use of space  by people and animals in this particular environments which, as sedimentological traps act in the great plateau of Patagonia.