Coastal occupations in Tierra del Fuego, southernmost South America: a geoarchaeological study of a Late Holocene hunter-gatherer context at Marazzi 2

IVANA LAURA OZÁN; CHARLES FRENCH; FLAVIA MORELLO REPETTO; CARLOS ALBERTO VASQUEZ; TOMAS LUPPO

GEOARCHAEOLOGY-AN INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL

JOHN WILEY & SONS INC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2015

0883-6353

This paper focuses on the Marazzi 2 site, a short-lived Late Holocene (from 900-810 BC to the European arrival) occupation of hunter-gatherers located on the northwestern steppe of Tierra del Fuego, Chile. Our aim is to understand the stratigraphy, formation processes and pedogenesis with respect to human occupation over the last 3000 years. From an excavation unit placed on a former fluvial terrace of the Torcido River, we integrate soil micromorphology, mineralogical analysis,geochemical data, magnetic susceptibility data and geomorphology as well as the micro- and macro-frequency distributions of the archaeological material. A micro-taphonomical perspective is also applied to the anthropogenic components recorded in the thin sections. Through all these lines of evidence we discuss various events in the interplay between soil development and the human occupations over time. We propose that there is aggradational pedogenesis on a fluvial terrace with an episode of better soil development that is coincident with a phase of more intense human occupation at c. 860 BC. Taphonomic analysis suggests that there are multiple occupation events mixed together, probably by biomechanical processes, which created a palimpsest with poor temporal resolution.