The processing of guanaco in Extra-Andean Patagonia over time.

ELOISA GARCÍA AÑINO; LAURA MARCHIONNI; LAURA MIOTTI

Congreso; 12ª International Conference of ArchaeoZoology; 2014

The relationship between humans and guanacos (Lama guanicoe) have been a recurrent issue in zooarchaeology researches in the Southern Cone, allowing us to comprehend a wide range of ways of interacting and use of these resources by the hunter-gatherer societies in the past. In the Extra-Andean Patagonia, these studies enabled us to know that these ungulates have been the main economic resource since the early settlement of the area, registering an exhaustive utilization of them. In this paper we discuss the strategies involved in the processing of guanacos from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition to the Late Holocene in the Santa Cruz Central Plateau (Argentina). For this purpose, we present the anthropic modifications of the bone specimens from Cueva Maripe site, which is located in the northeast of this area. It is a large cave which is divided in two principal chambers by a rocky wall. The analysis focuses in the cut mark determinations, their features and topographic location, in order to identify the ways in which the carcasses of these animals were processed in different moments of the occupation. The information obtained allows us to discuss regionally the different utilization patterns identified in others areas of Patagonia and whether this variability depends on temporal or environmental issues, differential functionality or a combination of these factors. The zooarchaeological assemblages analyzed here come from both sectors of the site and, according to the radiocarbon dates, they belong to all the different moments of the Holocene.