How to get guanacos. Hunting patterns of Lama guanicoe, a view from Las Vueltas 1 site, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

SANTIAGO FERNANDO; SALEMME MÓNICA

San Rafael, Mendoza

Congreso; 12da Conferencia Internacional ICAZ.; 2014

Results of our on-going research on the exploitation and hunting patterns of guanaco (Lama guanicoe) in Tierra del Fuego, Argentina, are presented herein. We focus on a single deposit of densely packed guanaco bones from Las Vueltas 1, an open-air site located at the Rio Chico Basin in the northern Fuegian steppes. The stratigraphic record of more than twenty thousand bones and more than five thousand stone tools in 37,5 square meters, makes the site Las Vueltas 1 very unusual. It is a multicomponent site, where the best defined context (providing more information) is the 3rd event of occupation (ca. 550 years BP). Though guanaco is the species of highest frequencies, other species are represented, like rodents (Ctenomys sp.), canids, birds and mollusks.Different questions and hypotheses are encouraged using several frames of reference to test them: taxonomic and quantitative analysis, taphonomy approaches, analysis of natural and anthropic modifications, and review of ethnographic sources, as well. This site has been interpreted as a place where many animals were trapped and hunted in each event, in more than one occasion since at least the beginning of initial Late Holocene, taking advantage of the surrounding topography.LV1 site can be taken as a window for understanding hunting and butchering practices in the late Holocene in Patagonia.