Starch food from a potsherd found in a Late-Holocene hunter-gatherer site in Argentinean Patagonia: towards the visibility of Underground Storage Organs

CIAMPAGNA MARIA LAURA; MOLARES, SOLEDAD; LADIO, ANA; CAPPARELLI AYLEN

VEGETATION HISTORY AND ARCHAEOBOTANY

SPRINGER

Lugar: Berlin; Año: 2021 vol. 30 p. 89 - 105

0939-6314

The aim of this paper is to present recent advances in the microbotanical analyses of apotsherd from a Late Holocene hunter-gatherer site in Argentinean Patagonia, whichconstitutes the first evidence from ceramic material of the processing of starchy food.Standard methods were carried out for starch grain recovery and morphometricanalysis, care being taken in the prevention of cross-contamination and evaluation ofpost-depositional factors. Diagnostic features of the ancient starch grains recoveredwere compared against those from a list, available in the bibliography, of plantspotentially processed in pottery, but no match was found. An anatomical and starchgrain reference collection was established containing three of the most frequentlyconsumedtraditional wild Underground Storage Organs (USOs) of Patagonia:Alstroemeria aurea Graham, Tropaeolum porifolium Cav. and Diposis patagonicaSkottsb. in order to compare these against the archaeological record. We suggest thatTropaeolum aff. porifolium (and probably also Alstroemeria aff. aurea ) wereprocessed in the archaeological bowl the potsherd was part of, and discuss theseresults in terms of a better understanding of the role of wild USOs in subsistence andthe possible cooking systems used in hunter-gatherer societies in ArgentineanPatagonia.