Southern Andean Migrations: Multiscalar Approach to Its Drivers and Consequences

RAMIRO BARBERENA; AUGUSTO TESSONE; ERIK MARSH; LUMILA MENÉNDEZ; NICOLÁS RASCOVAN

Chicago

Congreso; 87th Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology; 2022

Society for American Archaeology

Migrations are an intrinsic aspect of human societies in the present as in the past and occur across levels of sociopolitical complexity, from small-scale mobile societies to ancient states. While the incidence and socio-demographic role of migrations is systematically studied in states and complex polities of the Americas, we still know little about its dynamics in small-scale hunter gatherer and agropastoral communities from ?peripheral? areas of the southern Andes (Argentina and Chile, 30?34ºS). We build on previous results that record a rapid migration pulse of farmers between 1270?1420 AD in the Uspallata Valley (Mendoza, Argentina), shortly preceding the local Inka conquest. Here we present a new project that will develop a bottom-up approach to human life-histories linking the micro-scale of the individual with the levels of communities and larger groupings. This will be based on an interdisciplinary study of human remains combining the demographic analysis of sites with migrants and locals, scale of mobility and place of origin by means of strontium isotopes, cultural practices of cranial modification, and biological lineages as revealed by morphometric studies and nuclear paleogenomics. By developing multiple case studies from diverse geographical and social contexts, we can contribute to building a comparative approach to human migrations.