Resource Exploitation and Human Mobility: Trends in the Archaeofaunal and Isotopic Record from Central Western Argentina

GUSTAVO NEME; ADOLFO GIL; OTAOLA CLARA; GIARDINA MIGUEL

International Journal of Osteoarchaeology

John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Lugar: Las Vegas; Año: 2015 vol. 25 p. 866 - 876

1047-482x

Previous researches have examined the zooarchaeological record to understand changes in human diet in centralwestern Argentina through time. This research has focused on variations in the relative abundance of large prey inarchaeofaunal contexts. The observed changes were explained by a decrease in residentialmobility, forced by boththe intensification in the use of resources and the introduction of the first domesticated plants ca. 2000 years BP.In this paper, we revised archaeofaunal interpretations by taking into account zooarchaeological assemblagesand human isotope records within the biogeographical distributions of prey in the region. Our resultsdemonstrate that faunal diversity in zooarchaeological assemblages has a stronger correlation with thenatural distribution of resources (especially with altitude) than with chronology, as was proposed previously.However, archaeofaunal information, including human isotopic data, suggests that a decrease in residentialmobility, postulated in a previous paper, took place, modifying the expected diversity distribution throughoutthe landscape.