CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

JOSE BERENGUER; MARIANO S MORALES; F. FLORES; S. IBACACHE; RICARDO VILLALBA; GONZALO VELAZQUEZ; DUNCAN A. CHRISTIE; R. DE POL; CLAUDIO ALVAREZ; DIEGO ALISTE

Lugar:

Dublin

Reunión:

Conferencia; INQUA; 2019

Resumen:

Fluctuations inthe availability of water resources represents the main factor which hasmodulated ecosystem dynamics, human population changes and culture in arid andsemiarid regions. One of the largest high-altitude semiarid regions of SouthAmerica is the Altiplano plateau in the Central Andes (~14°S-26°S). With a meanelevation of 4.000 m a.s.l. and many volcanoes up to 6.700 m a.s.l., theAltiplano has been the physical environment for the settlement of many localcommunities who have inhabited the region for thousands of years. Historically,human activities in the Altiplano have been strongly modulated by variations inclimate, particularly water availability. During the last decade, tree-ringresearch has been developed in this region allowingthe reconstruction of the dynamics of water resources at annual resolutionduring the last millennia. In the other hand on the mountain topsof the Altiplano exists many high-altitude pre-Columbian sanctuaries which areframed within the remarkable relationship between mountains and water, whichwas a fundamental feature on which local cultures of the Altiplano based theircomplex religious beliefs related to mountains as sources of water andfertility. The existence of archaeological wood on this sites utilized asofferings and/or firewood, and the possibility to develop regional tree-ringchronologies in the area allow the tree-ring dating and the development ofprecipitation reconstructions. On this investigation we present a new tree-ringbased regional precipitation reconstruction for the Altiplano for the lastmillennia, and the dating of three high-altitude sanctuaries located onmountain tops at ~6,000 m a.s.l. utilizing tree-ring widths and 14C wiggle-matchingof tree-ring sequences. For the last, we utilize a recently developed regional14C curve from the Altiplano region. The dating and occupancy of thesewater-related sanctuaries will contribute to a better understanding of therelationship between humans? religious beliefs and the semiarid environmentthat inhabited, on which century-scaledry periods are demonstrated to be a recurrent feature in the regional climate.