Hunter-Gatherer Adaptation in the Deserts of Northern Patagonia.

FERNANDO FRANCHETTI; OTAOLA, CLARA; GIARDINA, MIGUEL; LOUKAS BARTON

Washington DC

Congreso; 83th SAA Annual Meeting; 2018

Society American Archaeology

Arid environments set many constraints to human adaptation, specifically water scarcity and the heterogeneity in the availability of resources, both temporal and spatially. In this paper, we explore changes in the use of land in the Diamante Valley, Mendoza province, Argentina, during the Holocene. The aim is to test the validity of a perceived intensification process in North Patagonia. We conducted a surface systematic random sampling in three ecological zones, the Highlands, the Piedmont and the Lowlands. We selected three areas of 100km2 and established a sample of 400 hectares units in each of them to fulfill statistical rigour in our comparison of the environments. We present the results for lithics analysis comparing the different proportions of units with archaeological materials between the ecological zones. We monitor changes in subsistence and settlement patterns in the Late Holocene through differences in raw materials proportions, as well as in the densities of instruments, debitage and cores.