Cooperaton in Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Societes in Tierra del Fuego. Resource Spaital Correlation and Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Mobility

AHEDO, V.; CARO, J.; PEREDA, M.; BRIZ, I.; ZURRO, D.; GALÁN, J.; ALVAREZ , M.; AHEDO, V.; SANTOS, I.; PEREDA, M.; ZURRO, D.; ALVAREZ , M.; SANTOS, I.; CARO, J.; BRIZ, I.; GALÁN, J.

Barcelona

Workshop; Internatonal Workshop How wrong is my model? Empirical Challenges in Archaeology, History and Anthropology; 2016

We are interested in the evolution of cooperation in a hunter-fisher-gatherer society that called itself "Yamana" and inhabited the southernmost part of the Fuegian archipelago (South America). Data provided by the rich ethnographic record tells us about a set of practices that arose whenever a cetacean was stranded on the coasts. When Yamana people discovered a beached whale they could either announce it publicly through four smoke signals and share it with others, or keep all its resources for themselves. When the people signalled their find, an aggregation event could take place where a high number of families that usually experienced their everyday lives in small groups would gather together to take advantage of the natural accumulation of resources. Within the Yamana these kind of cooperative attitudes were encouraged through education and different types of reputation and punishment mechanisms.