Those were the deserts: Archaeological and bioarchaelogica evidence of Late Holocene Human peopling in Southern Patagonia

RAFAEL GOÑI; SOLANA GARCÍA GURAIEB; FRANCISCO GUICHÓN

Mendoza

Congreso; Fourth Southern Deserts Conference; 2014

Laboratorio de Paleo-Ecología Humana. Facultad de Ciencias Exactas y Naturales. Universidad Nacional de Cuyo.

The characterization of an area as a desert or arid tends to carry a negative connotation,especially in terms of human settlement.However, in Southern Patagonia, the progressive desiccation that took place throughout the Holocene, particularly during the late Holocene (the last 2500 years), established new landscapes and opened spaces suitable for human occupation. During the Early and Middle Holocene, the large water bodies occupied great extensions of Southern Patagonia and restricted human mobility and circulation whereas the more constrained distribution of water during the last three millennia has allowed human populations to widely expand their mobility ranges and niches, incorporating practically every available space, in what has been defined as an extensification? process. Also, large tracts of territory previously covered with water were gradually occupied by dunes and dune environments, which were, in turn, colonized by shrub species, of which the molle (Schinus sp)played an important role for humans. This shrub, with its relatively large and provides ample cover, gave human populations the ability to find shelter in open-air settings along their new settlement routes. Thus, human mobility ceased to be determined by fixed points in space such as caves and rockshelters, which had been of vital importance during the Early and Middle Holocene; settlement of the region was now possible in other steppe niches. In this presentation, we posit that local environmental desiccation processes far from inhibiting hunter-gatherers? Late Holocene settlement, strongly favored it. We use archaeological, bioarchaeological, and satellite remote sensing data to assess these hypotheses. The case study is from the steppe region of northwestern Santa Cruz Province which comprises the lake basins and plateaus between Lake Salitroso and Lake Cardiel. As stated in previous research, throughout the Late Holocene, environmental conditions in this area experienced a progressive desiccation trend reaching its maximum during signficant droughts of the Medieval Climatic Anomaly (~1200-600 BP). This would have caused substantial changes in hunter-gatherers? land use and mobility strategies and particularly after 1000 BP, a time of marked reductions in residential mobility. The evidence for the last two millennia points to a recurrent human use of these two low-altitude basins, which would have had suitable conditions for human habitation during these times. At Lake Cardiel, the most intense archaeological signal of human occupation is recorded between ~2000 and 1000 BP whereas at Lake Salitroso, more redundant and stable use began ~900 BP, suggesting a demographic recovery after droughts during the Medieval Climatic Anomaly. Thus, during the arid Late Holocene, there was a significant increase in the archaeological evidence throughout Southern Patagonia, but at the same time, there are differences in the timing and nature of these occupations. Evidence presented here aims to contribute to the discussion of the complexities of deserts as environments suitable for human settlement, by showing that that deserts are neither inhospitable nor homogeneous in terms human habitation and conditions.