Risk Seeking and Risk Mitigation in the Argentine Andes

MORGAN CHRISTOPHER; GUSTAVO NEME; ADOLFO GIL; CLARA OTAOLA; MIGUEL GIARDINA

Online

Congreso; Society for American Archaeology 86th Annual Meeting; 2021

SAA

Using the Z-score model, we evaluate the costs and benefits of risk-seeking behaviors, and the means by which risks were mitigated, at El Indígeno, a massive high-altitude residential site in the south-central Andes. Our model suggests that though climatic amelioration during the site’s main period of occupation (1500–800 cal BP) may have played a subsidiary role in reducing some of the risks associated with long-term and intensive high-altitude occupations, the probability of increased social rewards likely played the principal role in encouraging long-term, seasonal site occupations. Some of the risks associated with these occupations were offset by transport of foodstuffs from lower elevations