Craving for hunger: a zooarchaeological study at the edge of the Spanish Empire

DE NIGRIS, MARIANA; PALOMBO, PAULA; SENATORE, MARIA XIMENA

No Informado

Congreso; 10th International Council of Zooarchaeology; 2006

ICAZ - Instituto Nacional de Antropologia e Historia, Mexico

The purpose of this paper is to present the first zooarchaeological results coming from Nombre de Jesús village. The village was established in Cabo Vírgenes (Santa Cruz, Argentina) as part of an Spanish project of fortifying the Magellan Strait at the end of the 16th century. Over 300 people were disembarked including soldiers, settlers, women and children. From the beginning, life conditions were extremely hard to villagers. Food scarcity, bad weather conditions and hostility with local populations were the main problems to face. Written documents point out that every nourishing resource present at the area was consumed but in spite of this almost all the villagers were died after three years. According to bone assemblages analyzed a great diversity of local species were effectively consumed. Several bird taxa, mammals like guanaco (Lama guanicoe) and seals, together with different species of shells were the principal targets of this population. Aside from this observed exploitation diversity bone samples do not show clear evidence of intensive processing and several inner resources, like marrow, seems to remain unused. The strategy followed by the Spanish villagers in addition to their previous nutritional deficiencies might have conducted them to a chronic famine and eventually to their death.