Guanaco Kill zone: the case of Las Vueltas 1 site. Tierra del Fuego, Argentina.

SANTIAGO FERNANDO; SALEMME MÓNICA; ORÍA JIMENA

Paris - Francia

Conferencia; ICAZ-2010 11ava CONFERENCIA INTERNACIONAL; 2010

International Council for Archaeozoology y Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle

The record of more than six thousand bones in 18,75 square meters in stratigraphy makes Las Vueltas 1 a very special locus. The site is located in a land stripe between two lakes, surrounded by low hills built on Tertiary sediments where 90 percent of the excavated bones belong to a single species, Lama guanicoe. Several frames of reference were used to analyse the faunal assemblage: quantitative analysis, natural and anthropic modifications, taphonomic approaches, and a review of ethnographic sources. In the site has been trapped many animals in each hunting event, taking advantage of the surrounding topography, which makes possible the "herding" of the animals to a central point. There, using bows and arrows, the animals would have been killed.The characteristics of the assemblage, the environment and the radiocarbon dating allow us to interpret this location as a guanaco kill site in the Fuegian steppe during the Holocene, since ca. 3200 to 530 year B.P. At least three events have been identified, being the latest the better defined.