IMHICIHU   13380
INSTITUTO MULTIDISCIPLINARIO DE HISTORIA Y CIENCIAS HUMANAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
capítulos de libros
Título:
Craving for hunger: a zooarchaeological study at the edge of the Spanish Empire.
Autor/es:
DE NIGRIS, MARIANA; PALOMBO, PAULA; SENATORE, MARIA XIMENA
Libro:
Anthropological Approaches to Zooarchaeology: Colonialism, Complexity and Animal Transformations
Editorial:
British Archaeological Reports, International
Referencias:
Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2008;
Resumen:
This paper presents the first zooarchaeological results from Nombre de Jesús village. The village was established in Cabo Vírgenes (Santa Cruz, Argentina) at the end of the sixteenth century as part of the Spanish fortification of the Magellan Strait. Over 300 people disembarked including soldiers, settlers, women, and children. From the beginning, living conditions were extremely hard for the villagers. Food scarcity, bad weather conditions, and hostility from local populations were the main problems the colonists faced. Written documents point out that every possible food resource present in the area was used, yet almost all the villagers had died within three years. According to the bone assemblages analyzed, a great diversity of local species was consumed. Several bird taxa, mammals like guanaco (Lama guanicoe), seals, and various species of shellfish were the principal targets of this population. Although the colonists used a diverse range of species, the faunal samples do not show clear evidence of intensive processing, and several resources, like marrow, were unused. The strategy followed by Spanish villagers, in addition to their previous nutritional deficiencies, might have led them to starvation.