Hunter-gatherers, biogeographic barriers and the development of human settlement in Tierra del Fuego

MORELLO, F., L.A. BORRERO, M. MASSONE, C. STERN, E. GARCIA-HERBST, R. MCCULLOCH, M. ARROYO, E. CALÁS, J. TORRES, A. PRIERO, I. MARTINEZ, G. BAHAMONDE, P. CÁRDENAS

ANTIQUITY

Antiquity Publications

Lugar: London; Año: 2012 p. 71 - 87

0003-598X

Tierra del Fuego represents the southernmost limit of human settlement in the Americas.While people may have started to arrive there around 10 500 BP, when it was stillconnected to the mainland, the main wave of occupation occurred 5000 years later, bywhich time it had become an island. The co-existence in the area of maritime huntergatherers(in canoes) with previous terrestrial occupants pre-echoes the culturally distinctivegroups encountered by the first European visitors in the sixteenth century. The studyalso provides a striking example of interaction across challenging natural barriers.