Cumulative Human Impacts on Pinnipeds Over the Last 7,500 Years in Southern South America

NYE JONATHAN; ZANGRANDO FRANCISCO; MARTINOLI MARIA PAZ; VAZQUEZ MARTIN; FOGEL MARILYN

The SAA Archaeological Record

Society for American Archaeology.

Año: 2018

1532-7299

At the southern tip of South America, pinnipeds havebeen a pivotal resource for human populations for thelast 7,5001 years. For the majority of this time, thesemarine mammals formed the basis of subsistence for maritimehunter-gatherers (Schiavini 1993), and their bones andhides were also sources of raw materials (Orquera and Piana2009). Only with the arrival of European and American sealersin the eighteenth century was this relationship seriouslyaffected. Although modern commercial sealing almost ledto the extinction of several species of pinnipeds in the SouthAtlantic, the industrial exploitation of this resource continuedin Argentina until it was prohibited in 1949.Our research program on this topic combines zooarchaeologicaland stable isotope studies from a historical ecologyperspective. We originated this approach, and developednew analytical techniques, to better link archaeological evidencewith paleo-ecosystem reconstructions (Zangrando,Panarello et al. 2014). In order to assess the relationship betweenpinnipeds and hunter-gatherers in Tierra del Fuego,we developed zooarchaeological analyses based on predictionsfrom foraging models. Since information about pastabundance or distribution of prey is rare in the southernSouth Atlantic, zooarchaeological evaluations were basedmainly on modern ecological parameters. Current foragingecology of pinnipeds may be a useful framework for understandingarchaeological evidence; however, that frameworkmight present an incomplete picture of the actual range ofbehaviors and ecological roles that these resources could have provided for human populations in the past. In fact, thehistorical distribution of pinnipeds in Patagonia and Tierradel Fuego is poorly understood. Moreover, species distributionsare likely to have fluctuated throughout time becauseof different environmental factors, or as a by-product of cumulativehuman impacts on marine ecosystems. Thus, therange of variation reflected in our knowledge about currentpinniped distribution may not sufficiently represent the past.Against this context, an isotopic zooarchaeological approachprovides a convenient route to expand our knowledge abouthuman-pinniped relations at long-time scales (Zangrando,Panarello et al. 2014).