"Fish exploitation in the Argentina Central Western wetlands".

MERCEDES CORBAT, PABLO CAHIZA; JORGE GARCÍA LLORCA, ADOLFO GIL

Stateline, Nevada

Conferencia; 33rd Biennial Great Basin Anthropological Conference; 2012

Great Basin Anthropological Association

While looking at Llancanelo and Guanacache wetland in the Mendoza context, one could ask What are wetlands and lakes doing in a landscape that is otherwise so thirsty-looking?, as Madsen and Kelly have done referring to the Great Basin (2008: 79). For the north of our region (Central Western Argentina or CWA), García Llorca and Cahiza (2007) note that the presence of permanent bodies of water in landscapes dominated by aridity must have exercised a strong attraction on local populations. For the south, Gil et al. (2007) propose that expectation, which was turned into biogeographical terms as a former occupation of those spaces with the greater water availability. The way people used wetlands was a product not only of the resources they offered but also of what was available in the surrounding areas (Madsen & Kelly 2008). Aquatic ecosystems in deserts have been characterized as extremely unstable and fluctuating in a great deal (Greenspan 1990). Therefore, Guanacache and Llancanelo wetlands must not have had the same importance to human populations through time. Archaeological sites with fish remains have been found in both areas. In all cases they belong to Late Holocene, when current climatic conditions begin to stabilize, but a great variability in precipitation and maybe in temperature is recorded.