Archaeobotany as heritage in Lolcura: past wild plant gathering in today’s highly fragmented ecosystem (Southern Chile).

ROA SOLÍS CONSTANZA; CAPPARELLI AYLEN

Ceske Budejovice

Congreso; 19th Conference of the International Work Group for palaeoethnobotany.; 2022

IWGP

Los Catalanes cave or Lolcura (S 37º 48’, W 72º 29’, 130 masl) is located in theRenaico basin in Collipulli municipality (Araucanía district, Southern Chile).Nowadays, the forestry industry (mainly pine and eucalyptus plantations) is theprincipal cause of landscape deterioration, to the detriment of theSclerophyll/Temperate forest that forms patches of vegetation associated withravines and mountains. This region is also the land of Mapuche people, thedescendants of the Native Americans who inhabited this area before the Spanisharrival (ca. AD 1540). They called it Gulumapu: the “Mapuche country” betweenthe Pacific ocean and the Andes mountain range. The strong relationshipbetween Mapuche people and the environment remains clear in several aspectsof their lives. For instance, the Mapuche concept of Mahuida (mountain, forest)refers to the procurement area of wild plant resources. Today Mapuche peopleuse intensively crops such as bread wheat, which is an essential plant in theireconomy; however, they also profit from wild plants from the forest, either forfood, medicine, handcraft, or construction. During the excavation of the cave,we developed a sampling program including anthracological, phytolith, starchgrain, and carpological analyses. Here we present the results of the latter. Thecarpological record shows the uses of different plant taxa in the last 2000 years.We will focus on the use of trees such as peumo (Cryptocarya alba) and maqui(Aristotelia chilensis), as well as herbs such as madi (Madia sativa) and grasses(Poaceae). We discuss the results according to the Mapuche traditional botanicalknowledge, compiled by missioners and naturalists, and the local ecologicalknowledge of the Mapuche communities living around the cave. From thearchaeobotanical record, we can value the uses of the forest in the past and theimportance of generating laws for bio-cultural-diversity preservation.