Palaeodemography in Southern South America. Quaternary International

MENDEZ, C.; L. PRATES; H. YACOBACCIO

Elsevier

Lugar: New York; Año: 2014 p. 158

978-950-23-1646-8

Radiocarbon datasets have increasingly been used to assess demographic trends in American Archaeology. This topic has shown to be a useful tool for discussing archaeological subject matter in broad scales, such as population changes, the relation between environmental and cultural fluctuations, and regional historical trajectories. In the case of South America, chronological evidence of early peopling has been the focus of a recent special issue of Quaternary International. Our focus has now turned to a narrower spatial scale of the Southern Cone, and the set of papers considered here report on a much broader chronological scale, including case studies in different time frames extending the Holocene period. The papers in question are the outcome of a Symposium held during the spring of 2012 at the 19th National Meeting of the Society for Chilean Archaeology in Arica (Chile). Ten papers were presented (see list of titles and authors below) covering a vast spatial scale, and a time frame from the late Pleistocene to the late Holocene. Several topics were discussed, among which we can highlight: the reliability of using 14C datasets for paleodemography, comparisons between 14C datasets and environmental trends, the use of thermoluminisense datasets, and the effect of scientific and taphonomic biases on the regional archaeological signal. Our aim will be to offer a data framework to discuss dispersal episodes and demographic models for human dynamics in the Southern Cone of South America, along with providing systematized radiocarbon datasets coupled with geographic information. The volume will include the submission of all papers listed below, a preface written by the guest editors and a closing paper by the moderator of the Symposium Dr. Hugo Yacobaccio. We believe this volume will be of interest to academics, graduate and undergraduate students of archaeology and quaternary geography.