The Calera site: A ritual bone deposit in the Pampean grasslands of Argentina.

CRISTIAN A. KAUFMANN; PABLO G. MESSINEO; GUSTAVO G. POLITIS; MARÍA C. ALVAREZ

D.F., México

Congreso; 10th International Conference of the International Council for Archaeolzoology.; 2006

Instituto Nacional de Antropología e História, Escuela Nacinal de Conservación, Restauración y Museografía.

In this paper the faunal analysis of the Calera site (Pampean region of Argentina) is summarized and discussed. The taxonomic diversity is determined and the processing techniques are discussed. The Calera site is characterized by the presence of a great variety of archaeological remains deposited in several adjacent pits at a depth of 90 cm. These pits were filled with archaeological material and with sediments which were covered with flat pieces of limestone. The cluster of cubetas formed an isolated deposit and does not seem to be part of a major nearby site. The recovered archaeological remains include ca. 5000 pieces of lithic debris from different raw materials (chert, quartzite, granite and silicified dolostone), more than 400 diagnostic tools, 266 pottery sherds (70 of them decorated), a shell bead, 234 fragments of pigment, marine shells and a cylindric phallic statuette. A 14C date obtained from a guanaco tooth was 2232 + 55 yrs BP which places this site in the Late Holocene. Preliminary faunal studies indicate that the most well-represented taxon is guanaco (Lama guanicoe) with MNI=51. Other taxa represented include the pampean deer (Ozotoceros bezoarticus), 5 carnivore species, 6 bird species, 3 fish species and 4 undetermined mammal species. Moreover, there is a great amount of micro-fauna bones (mostly rodents) still un-identified. In the case of guanaco, most bones are completely preserved and some of them show processing marks and evidence of marrow extraction. The analysis of guanaco teeth indicates that they belong to chulengos (young offspring of guanaco) suggesting that the formation of the deposit was at the end of spring or the beginning of summer. The morphology of the deposit, the diversity of the remains, the symbolic nature of many objects, the high density of bone (many of then without any trace of exploitation ) in small pits, the clear human agency in the burial process of the bones and the concurrent evidence, suggest that the deposit would have a ritual or ceremonial origin.