Arqueología de la transición Pleistoceno-Holoceno en la región Pampeana (Argentina). Historia y contribuciones al conocimiento de las ocupaciones tempranas del Cono Sur Americano

GUSTAVO MARTÍNEZ

Sao Paulo

Conferencia; Seminário: Povoamentos pré-históricos no Brasil Central; 2013

Museu de Arqueologia e de Etnologia da Universidade de São Paulo - Brasil - Département de Préhistoire du Muséum National de Histoire Naturelle- Paris, France

The Pampean Region of Argentina has been one of the key areas to understand aspects related to the early peopling of Southern South America. Discussions on the subject can be traced back to the end of the 19th Century with the research of F. Ameghino (1880). Many years later, G. Madrazo (1979) readdressed the topic of the early hunter-gatherers. Nevertheless, systematic investigations in early archaeological sites were not developed until the beginning of the 1980s (see Politis et al. 2011; Martínez and Gutiérrez 2011). Since then, several sites have been excavated in the region giving rise to the discussion of old and new issues that are currently part of the archaeological programs. This talk address and discusses some of these issues, namely: a) the timing and mode of the colonization process of the region, b) the procurement, patterns of lithic raw material circulation and technological strategies, c) the subsistence systems and the process of faunal extinctions and survival of Pleistocene species into the early Holocene, d) the hunter-gatherer strategies (e.g., mobility, water wells, etc.) to deal with periods of stress of critical resources (e.g., water) and e) disturbances of landscapes induced by human activities during the late Pleistocene-Early Holocene. These aspects will be discussed in the framework of the main results concerning paleoclimatic and paleoenvironmental reconstructions generated from multidisciplinary archaeological projects.