Early Holocene environments and the peopling of the Puna de Atacama, Argentina

HUGO YACOBACCIO; MARCELO MORALES

Northern Cape, Southafrica

Conferencia; 3rd Southern Deserts Conference; 2008

The eastern side of the Puna de Atacama was peopled around 11,000 years BP, in the transition between  Pleistocene and Early Holocene. This period was wetter and colder than today, and this favored human colonization of the highlands between 3400 and 4500 masl. Anyway, wetlands (marshes, lagoons and permanent springs) acted as attractors of human populations in a generally desert environment.This paper seeks to study the nature of the use of wetlands by the ancient population using a multiproxy approach. In this vein, paleoenvironmental information will be reviewed, and new data concerning local reconstruction of paleo-wetlands will be presented. This allow us to model human population of the dry and salt Puna in relation with the changing environment of the Pleistocene-Holocene transition.