Guanaco Kill zone: the case of Las Vueltas 1 site, Tierra del Fuego, Argentina

SANTIAGO FERNANDO; SALEMME MÓNICA; ORÍA JIMENA

Paris

Conferencia; International Council for Archaeozoology; 2010

Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle

The record of more than six thousand bones in 18,75 square meters instratigraphy makes Las Vueltas 1 a very special locus. The site is locatedin a land stripe between two lakes, surrounded by low hills built on Tertiarysediments where 90 percent of the excavated bones belong to asingle species, Lama guanicoe. Several frames of reference were usedto analyse the faunal assemblage: quantitative analysis, natural andanthropic modifications, taphonomic approaches, and a review of ethnographicsources.In the site has been trapped many animals in each hunting event, takingadvantage of the surrounding topography, which makes possiblethe “herding” of the animals to a central point. There, using bows andarrows, the animals would have been killed.The characteristics of the assemblage, the environment and the radiocarbondating allow us to interpret this location as a guanaco kill site inthe Fuegian steppe during the Holocene, since ca. 3200 to 530 year B.P.At least three events have been identified, being the latest the betterdefined.