Raven Garvey. 2021. Patagonian prehistory: human ecology and cultural evolution in the land of giants. Salt Lake City: University of Utah Press; 978-1-64769-026-7 hardback $65.

CASTRO, SILVINA CELESTE

ANTIQUITY

Cambridge University Press

Año: 2022 vol. 96 p. 771 - 773

0003-598X

This book addresses the prehistory of Patagonia (35–55°S). The author argues that Patagonia and its archaeological record should be seen as indispensable in studies of hunter-gatherers, human ecology and cultural evolution. This is because it is one of the few places in the world where groups maintained a clearly extractive economy, based on hunting and gathering, and a relatively egalitarian social organisation until the European conquest, and because it is the furthest place in the Americas from Siberia, from where the continent’s first inhabitants migrated. The study focuses on three key periods for regional populations: the initial colonisation of the territory during the Pleistocene–Holocene transition (Chapter 4), population dynamics during the Middle Holocene (Chapter 5) and the long-term maintenance of a foraging economy during the Late Holocene, until the Spanish conquest, c. AD 1550 (Chapter 6). The author approaches these topics by combining two evolutionary paradigms: human behavioural ecology and co-evolutionary theory (Chapter 3). Archaeological data are evaluated through macroecological, microeconomic (the diet breadth model, marginal value theorem and ideal free distribution) and co-evolutionary models.