Cumulative Human Impacts on Pinnipeds Over the Last 7,500 Years in Southern South America

NYE, J. W.; ZANGRANDO, A. F.; MARTINOLI, M.P.; VÁZQUEZ, M.; FOGEL, M.

The SAA archaeological record. The Magazine of the Society for American Archaeology

Society for American Archaeology

Año: 2018 vol. 18 p. 47 - 52

1532-7299

At the southern tip of South America, pinnipeds were a pivotal resource for human populations during the last 7500 years. For the majority of this time period, these marine mammals were important food resources for maritime hunter-gatherers, which were also used as source of raw materials. These resources were the basis of subsistence throughout the entire archaeological sequence until recently. Only with the arrival of European and American sealers in the nineteenth century was this relationship seriously affected. Although modern commercial sealing almost led to the extinction of several species of pinnipeds in the South Atlantic, the industrial exploitation of this resource continued in Argentina until it was prohibited in 1949. From a historical ecology perspective, our research program on this topic combines zooarchaeological and stable isotope studies. This approach originated due to some analytical requirements. In order to assess the relationship between pinnipeds and hunter-gatherers in Tierra del Fuego, we developed zooarchaeological analyses based on the predictions from foraging models. Since information about past abundance or distribution of this prey is rare in the southern South Atlantic, zooarchaeological evaluations were based mainly on modern ecological parameters. Current foraging ecology of pinnipeds may be a useful framework for understanding the archaeological evidence, however, that framework might present an incomplete picture of the actual range of behaviors and ecological roles that these resources could have provided for the human populations in the past. In fact, the historical distribution of pinnipeds in Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego is poorly known. Moreover, species distributions are likely to have fluctuated throughout time as a consequence of different environmental factors, or as the by-product of the cumulative human impacts on marine ecosystems. Thus, the range of variation reflected in our knowledge about current pinniped distribution may not sufficiently represent the past. Against this background, an isotopic zooarchaeology approach provides a convenient route to expand our knowledge about the human-pinniped relations at long-time scales.