The visual colonization of northern Patagonia (South America). Rock art insights on environmental knowledge during the peopling of a desert-highland interface

GUADALUPE ROMERO VILLANUEVA; RAMIRO BARBERENA

Karratha

Conferencia; 5th Southern Deserts Conference; 2018

University of Western Australia

It has been argued that the colonization of previously uninhabited Patagonian deserts involved several stages characterized by different modes of interaction between humans and their physical and social environment, based on a variable knowledge of its properties. We suggest that rock art provides unique insights by exploring how this corpus of environmental knowledge was first originated and finally inscribed in the Northern Patagonian landscape. This macro-region is located at the western limit of the South American Arid Diagonal and presents high topographic and ecologic variation, with some highland environments characterized by marked seasonality. Our biogeography-based research indicates a large scale of human mobility and ecological complementarity between deserts and highlands were important strategies to cope with the highly temporal and spatial variability associated with this landscape. Social interaction among generally dispersed human groups trough specialized macro-regional information networks was also important due to the potential that population convergence has for the exchange of information about the environment and neighbor human groups, even in the absence of face-to-face interaction. With this study, we assess the types of information transmitted through rock art in order to understand past hunter-gatherer groups to deal with the multiple social and ecological problems.