HUMAN DIET AND RESIDENTIAL MOBILITY IN THE CENTRAL WESTERN ARGENTINA COLONY: STABLE ISOTOPES (13C, 15N, 18O) TRENDS IN ARCAHEOLOGICAL BONE SAMPLES

HORACIO CHIAVAZZA, DANIELA MANSEGOSA Y ADOLFO GIL 3 Y 4,

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL ARCHAEOLOGY

Springer

Lugar: New York; Año: 2014 vol. 19

1092-7697

Change or continuity of the human diet after the Spanish settlement in America is a topic mostly addressed from historical sources and very little from the archaeological record. To counteract this weakness, this paper present a study of human diet in individuals who lived in central western Argentina between the XVII, XVIII and XIX centuries. The paper focus in historical bioarchaeology using stable isotopes to determine human diet. The study of diet on an individual level is a relevant source of information to learn about human strategies and their variability. Stable isotopes have become a solid tool to infer aspects of diet and mobility. But, they have scarcely been used in historical archaeology, especially in South America. This paper presents the isotope results (δ13C, δ15N, δ18O) from samples of human skeletal remains found in Mendoza (Argentina). The aim is to reconstruct the human diet and its residential mobility. Our results show a very little inclusion of maize in these populations? diets, significantly less than those for the same region during pre-Hispanic times. The protein fraction of the diet in historical-period Mendoza was likely composed of a combination of resources with C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathways while the carbohydrate fraction was likely from C3 resources. On the other hand, δ18O shows a wide variability of values and they all tend to be significantly depleted. Compared with the water δ18O from this region indicate that the water drank do not came from the local surface river but could be from the highland Andes Cordillera (far from Mendoza) or from the local aquifer. These δ18O also show significantly different values between these human samples and they are significantly different to the δ18O values observed in the same region for pre-Hispanic human samples. In general isotopes show that diet and mobility and/or water sources in historical populations in this region, were clearly different from those in pre-Hispanic populations. The data do not indicate in any way a historic continuity in practices associated with these aspects of social life between prehispanic and post Hispanic human population.