Relationships between rock art and the archaeofaunas in the Central Patagonian Plateau, Argentina.

MIOTTI LAURA; CARDEN NATALIA

Taphonomy and Archaeology in Argentina

Archaeopress

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2007; p. 203 - 218

The goal of this paper is to relate the archaeofaunistic information to the rock art in the Deseado Plateau region, with the aim of visualizing in this way the attitudes of people towards animals during the prehispanic past. Along the 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 contribution, certain changes of attitudes can be mentioned, at least as a hypothesis. In this sense, the key questions are: what is the nature of the changes in the artistic expressions along space and time?, and which are the attitudes and the relations between people and animals, especially those preferred to hunt and consume? To explore 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 may allow to reach higher theoretical levels, integrating the economical, social and symbolic aspects of the relation between people and their surrounding