The Uspallata Valley Archaeological Project: A Study of the Transition from Foraging to Agropastoralism around Cerro Tunduqueral, Mendoza, Argentina

BUEHLMAN-BARBEAU, SAVANNA; CARLINE, KRISTIN; DE ALBA, JENNIFER; MARSH, ERIK J.

Vancouver

Congreso; 82° reunión annual de la Society for American Archaeology; 2017

The first field school in the Uspallata valley, Mendoza, took place in 2016 and was organized by the Institute for Field Research (IFR). Its goals were to clarify the use of the landscape over the last two thousand years by people with an economy that incorporated hunting, gathering, small-scale agriculture, and possibility llama herding. Research was near one of Mendoza?s best known archaeological sites, Cerro Tunduqueral. This site?s dense rock art has been known for decades, but little is known about the people who made the engravings. Excavations at the adjacent cave site Tunduqueral 1 revealed 1.6 m of cultural deposits dominated by lithic artifacts and a major hearth feature. Ceramics were absent and faunal remains were poorly preserved, with the exception of Rhea Americana eggshell. Typologically early tools hint that the initial occupation was as early as the Middle or Early Holocene. Systematic surface collections in the same area revealed extensive concentrations of ceramics, ground stone, and lithics, remnants of activities in seasonally active alluvial plains. People?s movements around the landscape probably included seasonal occupations of all three places: long occupations near streams, brief stays at the rock shelter, and making rock art at Cerro Tunduqueral.