Inter group guanaco varibility in Southern Patagonia: carbon stable isotopes analyses and its implications for zooarchaeological studies

TESSONE AUGUSTO; RINDEL DIEGO; BELARDI JUAN B.; PANARELLO HECTOR O.; GOÑI RAFAEL A.

Paris

Congreso; ICAZ-2010 International Council for Archaeozoology 11th International Conference; 2010

International Council for Archaeozoology

The aim of this work is to study the isotopic variability of guanaco family groups and discuss the implications of these results for the analysis of archaeofaunal contexts from Patagonia. In this sense, we seek to assess the degree of variability in d13C values from five  groups of guanacos (Lama guanicoe) from Lake Cardiel, Santa Cruz province, Patagonia Argentina. The assemblages are the result of a winter mortality event (Belardi and Rindel 2008). We have sampled a total of 71 individuals representing the different groups. We also incorporates the analysis of 10 samples from another group from a more southern sector of the area, plus another 20 individuals that were collected unclustered at different places in the north and central-west Santa Cruz. We extracted the collagen of the bone remains by conventional techniques (Tykot 2004), and obtained the ratio 13C/12C by mass spectrometry. This type of analysis will generate criteria  to study the different hunting strategies - single vs. communal - used by hunter-gatherer populations  who inhabited southern Patagonia during the Holocene. This line of evidence has already been used in  other animal species in archaeological contexts to study diferent isotopic signature to elucidate human hunting behavior (Hope 2004, Fenner 2008).