Exploring trajectories towards social complexity: marine foragers in the archipelagos of Tierra del Fuego and Norway

BJERCK, HEIN; PIANA, ERNESTO LUIS; ZANGRANDO, ATILIO FRANCISCO J.; BREIVIK, HEIDI; TIVOLI, ANGÉLICA MONTSERRAT; FRETHEIM, SILJE

Marine Ventures. Archaeological Perspectives on Human-Sea Relations

Equinox

Lugar: Sheffield; Año: 2016; p. 123 - 138

This paper explores some conventional assumptions for complexity in marine hunter-gatherer contexts. Evidence and interpretations of settlement patterns and archaeological structures, decorated artefacts and fishing intensification process are examined with the intention to assess how far the association of those features can be recognized in long-term archaeological contexts of the Beagle Channel (Tierra del Fuego) and the Mesolithic Norway. Associated inferential problems are discussed on the basis of a comparative analysis. This study shows that factors usually linked to complexity can be identified in both areas, but they operated over different time spans and at different points in the long archaeological sequences. It was also observed that such lines of evidence confront serious problems of resolution and integrity (e.g., poor organic preservation), which in turn are conditioned by diverse scientific presumptions. In order to stimulate studies of increasing or decreasing complexity in hunter-gatherer societies, this paper finally notes that the complexity conception need to be archaeologically clarified and strengthened in contrast to typological perspectives.