A Paleoecological Approach to the Archaeology of Southern Mendoza

NEME, G., V. DURÁN, V. CORTEGOSO, S. DIEGUEZ, M. GIARDINA, C. DE FRANCESCO, C. LLANO, A. GUERCI Y A. GIL

Malargüe

Congreso; Primer Encuentro Científico del ICES; 2005

International Center for Earth Sciences

The present work supports the idea that the archaeological record constitutes a valid approach to understand the relationship between humans and environment. It not only constitutes a paleoecological record because of the recovery of biological evidences associated to human occupations but due to the fact that humans themselves are significant components of past ecosystems. In other words, the understanding of human occupations implies the comprehension of making decisions within a particular environmental context. If we accept humans as components of the ecosystem, there are several available theoretical and methodological backgrounds that allow the understanding of past systems, which range from ecological evolutionary approaches to landscape archaeology. Human paleoecology allows to explore and comprehend the variability of the archaeological record in terms of human strategies as well as to offer perspectives for the understanding of past processes. These approaches have also been denominated environmental archaeology. Although paleoecological studies have been originally based on non-human biological indicators, modern research programmes are starting to incorporate the human component within this system. Archaeological emphasis has varied from studies accentuating on systemic functional topics to others stressing the perception and construction of landscape. Many processes need to be understood in temporal scales without historical record or, eventually, when the temporal scale needed to generate those processes avoid their own perception. Here, the archaeological record as a paleoecological record provides a significant contribution.The archaeology of Mendoza did not omitted the ecological component in the past but it was masked by a nature-culture dichotomy. In fact, the different theoretical backgrounds of paleoecological and archaeological studies avoided an explanatory integration of both approaches. The predominant historic-cultural emphasis mainly focused on the reconstruction of typological sequences and possible population "routes" as well as on ideas rather than in the understanding of human strategies. Therefore, the environment was simply a scenario where human populations acted. However, human ecology offers an opportunity for integration since the nucleus of the programme integrates the components from a systemic or evolutionary approach. Here, archaeological remains are analysed as an additional proxy record with the same value as other proxies usually employed in paleoenvironmental reconstructions. The aim of the present work is to report preliminary results obtained from an ongoing pilot study in southern Mendoza focused on the understanding of human occupation in relation to past environmental evolution. First, information on the environmental setting and expected human strategies is discussed. Second, aspects of human biogeography are assessed. To do that, an emphasis in the mode as the region was explored, colonised and occupied and how the environmental characteristics would have been related to those processes, is given. In addition, ongoing pilot studies on paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the area are presented. These multidisciplinary studies include several disciplines such as stratigraphy, sedimentology, palynology and malacology.