South America hunter-gatherers

POLITIS, G; HERNANDO, A.

The Oxford Handbook of the Archaeology and Anthropology of Hunter Gatherers.

Oxford University Press.

Lugar: Oxford; Año: 2014; p. 1031 - 2054

South America is a fascinating region not only for the study of modern hunter-gatherers, but also for theoretical reflection on the evolutionary scheme that anthropology and archaeology have used to define them. As the Selk´nam and Yámana of Tierra del Fuego, considered to be ‗archetypically? ‗primitive? hunter-gatherers (Borrero 1992; Gamble 1992; Martinic 1995; Vidal 1999,114) (Figure 1), were almost virtually extinct by the 1930s, research attention has been focused on groups living in the tropical lowlands (Rival 1999a, 78-9). Since the beginning of the XVI Century, when Europeans started to colonized the continent, the life of the South American hunter-gatherers suffered deep changes, which ultimately derived to most of them to extinctions. However, this way of life still survives in the tropical lowlands, showing it strength and vitality.