Plant remains immerse in raw earthen architecture: reflecting constructive and domestic archaeological data from colonial contexts of the Argentine Northwest.

CASTILLÓN VANINA; LOPEZ, MARIA LAURA; CAPPARELLI AYLEN

Ceske Budejovice

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

IWGP

The objective of this work is to analyze, from an archaeological and ethnobotanical approach, the botanical remains present in the raw earthen architecture of Nuestra Señora de Talavera, one of the first colonial urban settlements established along the Iberian advance during the 16-17th centuries in the Argentine Northwest. This city was founded in 1562, but after about fifty years of its existence, various reasons forced its inhabitants to move and re-found it in a new location, both of them included in what is currently called the archaeological locality of Esteco, sites I and II respectively (Salta, Argentina). It is in Esteco II where remains of mud bricks, mortars and walls belonging to one of the main buildings, the “Iglesia Mayor”, were preserved and are the object of analysis in this work. The sampling procedure, processing of the sediments and identification of botanical macro and microremains, predominantly opal silica phytoliths, were carried out on the basis of standard methodology. Among the archaeobotanical results, the presence of wild and cultivated grasses stands out, the latter represented by native species such as maize, as well as exotic ones such as wheat. Diatoms and microcharcoals were also recorded. Complementarily to the archaeobotanical research, both ethnobotanical observation and interviews were conducted with local inhabitants with knowledge about earth traditional construction techniques. This information contributed to suggesting a set of vegetable fibres that could be intentionally incorporated to the mud in the past, as well as to postulating a series of archaeological material correlates expected from the construction process. Finally, the integration of both kinds of approaches allows us to propose a set of processing and building techniques carried out at the study site, as well as to discuss the informative potential of plant remains from earthen architecture to recognize constructive cultures and domestic activities in colonial contexts.