Microfossils characterization from south Andean economic plants

KORSTANJE, MARÍA ALEJANDRA; BABOT, MARÍA DEL PILAR

Plants, people and places: recent studies in phytolith analysis, (M Madella y D. Zurro, eds.)

Oxbow Books

Lugar: Cambridge; Año: 2007; p. 41 - 72

We present a comprehensive and critic characterisation of phytoliths and starch grains from Southern Andean economic plants, based on the published literature and our own research, as a way to encourage more work in microfossils in that region. The use of phytoliths for archaeological studies is successfully spreading world-wide. In contrast, the field and laboratory projects incorporating phytoliths in the Southern Andes. One of the reasons for such a situation may be that there are not many economic taxa known in the arid Andes environment (Puna and Sierra) that produce the so-called diagnostic phytoliths. Therefore, as opal phytolith identification may not be enough to understand the archaeological record related to plant use, we propose to study the whole microfossil assemblage, in this case starch granules -but also pollen, calcium phytoliths and cellulose.