The texture of Andean migration: A life-history approach

RAMIRO BARBERENA; PETRUS LE ROUX; AUGUSTO TESSONE; GUSTAVO LUCERO; DANIELA GUEVARA; PAULA NOVELLINO; MARÍA FERNANDA QUINTANA; JULIE LUYT; JUDITH SEALY

Ushuaia

Taller; IV Taller de Arqueología e Isótopos Estables en el Sur de Sudamérica; 2023

CADIC-CONICET

Migrations are an intrinsic aspect of human societies in the present as in the past, occurring across levels of sociopolitical complexity from small-scale mobile societies to ancient states. However, they are still largely neglected as a significant process in the archaeology of small-scale southern Andean societies (30-34º S). We build on previous research on migrant farmers recorded between 1270-1420 years AD (Late Intermediate Period) at the Uspallata Valley (Mendoza, Argentina), shortly preceding the Inka conquest. Here we present new multi-isotope results integrating strontium, carbon, and nitrogen, and develop a bottom-up approach to human life-histories linking the micro-scale of the individual with the levels of groups or communities. By combining our strontium isoscape to identify locals and migrants, a study of the metric of their isotopic niches of locals and migrants, and a Bayesian analysis of radiocarbon dates to assess the timing and pattern of migrations, we characterize the internal variation in the life-histories of the migrant groups. Our results are framed on a larger interdisciplinary study that combines the demographic analysis of the sites with migrants and locals, scale of mobility and place of origin, cultural practices of cranial modification, and biological lineages as revealed by morphometric studies and nuclear paleogenomics. This research contributes to the endeavour of understanding the development of highly diversified human socioecological niches during the last 2000 years, and how migration contributed along the way.