The golden fish. Subsistence changes and dietary implications of littoral fishing among sea nomads of Tierra del Fuego.

ZANGRANDO A. F.

Poznan

Workshop; 15th Fish Remains Working Group Meeting -ICAZ-; 2009

This paper addresses this issue by assessing the relative dietary contribution of littoral fishing in a long-term scale. The “weight method” approach is applied to evaluate the relative meat and caloric yields of littoral fish species. This analysis allows us to evaluate properly the implications of littoral fishing in subsistence change among hunter-gatherer populations of the southern end of South America. The results presented above contribute with important information to evaluate the position held by the Paranotothenia magellanica in a context of subsistence chances among the Fuegian sea nomads during the last 500 years. The dietary contribution of this species increased significantly through time up to the caloric levels inferred for sea and terrestrial mammals. This significant increase may be related to a resource depression of larger prey types within coastal and inland patches (v.g. fur seals and guanacos).