Andean economic plants sphere: vegetal microfossil characterization

KORSTANJE, MARÍA ALEJANDRA; BABOT, M. DEL PILAR

Cambridge

Otro; 4th International conference on phytolith research: New perspectives in phytolith research: climate, environment and archaeology; 2002

The McDonald Institute for Archaeological Research. University of Cambridge

The use of phytoliths for agricultural studies is successfully spreading. In contrast, the archaeological studies incorporating phytoliths in the southern Andes are scarce. One of the reasons may be there are not many staples or economic taxa that produce non-redundant phytoliths and are possible to grow in the arid Andes environment (Puna and Sierra). Since food production in the Andes involves mixed farming and herding systems and a strong reliance on the gathering of wild resources, we propose to study the whole microfossils assemblage when opal phytoliths record is not enough, as in this case. We present here, as a way to encourage more work in the southern Andes, a comprehensive and critic characterization of the opal phytolith, starch and faunal spherulites record for that region, both from literature and our own research.