Subsistense strategies in the Southern cone of South America during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene: Argentina as a case study.

MESSINEO, P. G.; MARTÍNEZ, G. A.; KAUFMANN, C. A.; GUTIÉRREZ, M. A.; RAFUSE, D. J.

QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS

PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD

Lugar: Amsterdam; Año: 2016 p. 55 - 65

0277-3791

This paper highlights regional and temporal variation in the presence and exploitation of faunal resources from different regions of Argentina during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene. Specifically, the faunal analysis considered here includes the zooarchaeological remains from all sites older than 7500 14C years BP. We include quantitative information for each reported species (genus, family, or order) and we use the number of identified specimens (NISP per taxon and the NISPtotal by sites) as the quantitative measure of taxonomic abundance. The taxonomic richness (Ntaxatotal and Ntaxaexploited) and the taxo- nomic heterogeneity or Shannon-Wiener index are estimated in order to consider dietary generalization or specialization, and ternary diagrams are used to categorize subsistence patterns of particular sites and regions. The archaeological database is composed of 78 sites which are represented by 110 stratigraphic contexts. Our results demonstrate that although some quantitative differences between regions are observed, artiodactyls (camelids and deer) were the most frequently consumed animal resource in Argentina. Early hunter-gatherers did not follow a specialized predation strategy in megamammals. A variety in subsistence systems, operating in parallel with a strong regional emphasis is shown, according to specific environmental conditions and cultural trajectories.