Yendegaia Rockshelter, the First Rock Art Site on Tierra del Fuego Island and 5 Social Interaction in Southern Patagonia (South America).

GALLARDO, F.; GABELLO, G.; SEPULVEDA, M.; BALLESTER, B.; FIORE, D.; PRIETO, A.

Latin American Antiquity

Society for American Archaeology

Año: 2023 vol. 34 p. 532 - 549

1045-6635

Through our research at Bahía Yendegaia on the Beagle Channel in southernmostPatagonia—the ancestral territory of the Yagán people—we discovered the first rock art site on Tierra del Fuego Island. Thegeometric visual images found at Yendegaia Rockshelter present motifs andcompositions analogous to those recorded at other sites on the southernarchipelago associated with the marine hunter-gatherer tradition. They alsoshow graphic similarities to the rock art paintings attributed to terrestrialhunter-gatherer populations from the Pali Aike volcanic field, located on the north side of the Strait ofMagellan in mainland Patagonia. Both, however, display quantitativedifferences, which suggest that they emerged from different visual traditionsbut from the same field of graphicsolutions. Navigational technology enabled the canoe-faring Fuegian people tohave long-distance mobility and to maintain a flow of social information mediated via visual imagery expressed inmaterial forms, such as rock art and expressions of portable art. Ethnohistoricreports suggest a cooperative social interaction more than a competitive one.This cooperative social dynamic would have been necessary for the survival ofmarine societies in the harsh environmental conditions characteristic of thesouthern part of south Patagonia.