Rethinking the Role of Wild Resources in Productive Societies: Archives from Rock Shelter Cases of North-western Argentina

KORSTANJE, MARÍA ALEJANDRA

Social Perspectives on Ancient Lives from Paleoethnobotanical Data

Springer

Año: 2017; p. 77 - 100

Traditional analytical dichotomies are common in Archaeology: while ?domesticated? may have been a powerful tool for explain changes in exploratory economies, the ?wild? remained an obscure category in problems related to productive societies. This strong differentiation between livelihoods/lifestyles was particularly clear in the archaeology of rock shelter occupations of northwestern Argentina, which usually have not ?productive? loci associated. Recent studies demonstrate that in some cases wild resources were as or even more important than domesticated ones in complex societies from the Formative Period up to and under Inca rule. I make a revision of the livelihoods of those rock shelter´s archaeological sites occupied by societies long established as agriculturalists and pastoralists discussing the comparative case from Los Viscos rock shelter (Catamarca, Argentina)