Butchery evidence on rodent bones from archaeological sites

ESCOSTEGUY PAULA; SALEMME, MÓNICA

Proceedings of the General Session of the 11th ICAZ International Conference

BAR (British Arcaheological Reports)

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2011;

The aim of this contribution is to document and interpret the butchery evidence on rodent bones from several sites of two areas of the Pampean Region (Argentina), that were inhabited by hunter-gatherer-fishers during the Late Holocene. Two assemblages come from the La Guillerma archaeological locality -Río Salado Depression, Buenos Aires province- and the other two are from the Cañada Honda archaeological locality and Río Luján site, in the Río Paraná basin, northern Buenos Aires province. Different species of rodents were recorded in these sites: Holochilus brasiliensis, Reithrodon auritus, Ctenomys sp., Cavia aperea, Myocastor coypus, Lagostomus maximus and Hydrochaeris hydrochaeris. Size differences among these species are a very important issue: some of them are small (less than 1kg), others are middle-small sized (around 5-10kg) and the biggest rodent can reach a weight of 50kg. Cutmarks, fracture patterns and burning features have been registered. M. coypus bones -the most frequent taxa in the studied archaeological sites- present evidence of skinning, filleting and disarticulation, as well as fractures, meaning that this species would have been the most exploited rodent. Other taxa that show butchery evidence are L. maximus and H. hydrochaeris; however, the evidence from these species is scarce compared with those recognized in M. coypus bones.