Shellmidden formation at the Beagle Channel (Tierra del Fuego, Argentine).

PIANA, E.L.; ORQUERA, L.A.

Monumental questions: prehistoric megaliths, mounds and enclosures

British Archaeological Reports

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2010; p. 263 - 271

In the Beagle Channel Region more than a thousand shellmiddens are known. Some of them have been studied, covering more than six millennia up to ethnohistorical times. All the studied and sampled shellmiddens include traces of multiple daily activities. Ring-shaped ones, almost all of them within a 4 m diameter, are the most frequent form and show a tendency to be clustered in large sites. This paper discusses their formation process based on results obtained from four different research lines: archaeological, etnohistorical, experimental and actualistic observations. It underlines the role of human activity carried out on the spot as a spatial attractor and as a more important variable than landscape features. We conclude that the first settlement on a specific place might have been produced by a high variety of reasons, but soon the shells and other debris accumulation provoked microtopographic modifications that called for new reoccupations and conditioned the use of the space for future visitors.