Across place and time: physical activity and lifestyles among archaeological populations in southern South America

SALEGA, SOLEDAD

Poitiers

Congreso; 2nd Virtual Conference of Women Archaeologists and Paleontologists; 2022

In bioarchaeology, the presence of entheseal changes (EC) and degenerative joint disease (DJD) has been generally used as proxies for physical activity and lifestyles of past populations, especially regarding their subsistence strategies. Although for archaeological contexts it was traditionally proposed that agriculture and sedentarization would have implied an improvement in living conditions and less physical demand, the various results that different researchers have reached show that there is no exclusive and distinctive pattern for each lifestyle. In southern South America, research on physical activity has focused more on locally restricted areas and/or certain time periods. Thus, the aim of the project presented here is to apply a comparative approach across a wider geographical and chronological span. The presence of EC and DJD is analyzed among archaeological populations from Argentina and southern Brazil in order to evaluate their relationship with hunter/fisher-gathering and agriculture strategies, as well as those with a mixed economy. Our focus is on the different lifestyles and environmental settings of human populations rather than chronological periods that are usually applied in archaeology.