ENVIRONMENTAL VARIATION AND HUMAN OCCUPATION DURING THE MIDDLE HOLOCENE: DATA AND PERSPECTIVES FROM MID-LATITUDE SOUTH AMERICA

GIL, A.; NEME, G.; GARVEY, R; ZÁRATE, M.

CAIRNS, AUSTRALIA

Congreso; XVII INQUA CONGRESS. THE TROPICS: HEAT ENGINE OF THE QUATERNARY; 2007

INTERNATIONAL UNION FOR QUATERNARY RESEARCH

This paper explores how groups of hunter-gatherers in the Southern Andean region of South America responded to environmental changes between 8000 and 4000 14C years BP.  Archaeological and paleoenvironmental data suggest that the middle Holocene was a time of resource scarcity in many parts of the Americas.  In some regions, it appears that groups of hunter-gatherers responded to this period of heightened environmental aridity by seeking refuge in the most well-watered natural settings, abandoning the drier, more marginal environments that they had previously occupied.  It remains unclear, however, whether these purported occupational hiatuses are the result of true abandonment or whether hunter-gatherers in these regions responded to environmental conditions in ways that made them less archaeologically visible, giving the impression of abandonment. Despite ample documentation of these phenomena in North America, it is only recently that similar scenarios have been considered in South America.  Among South Americanist archaeologists, discussion has centered on whether the Southern Andean region was largely abandoned during the middle Holocene and whether observed changes in site frequencies and distributions are related to a warming and drying trend identified by paleoecologists.  In this paper, we explore the archaeological record of west-central Argentina using radiocarbon tendencies and zooarchaeological and lithic technological data, considered in conjunction with paleoenvironmental evidence for increasing regional aridity.  We propose a pronounced variability the human response to these conditions across west-central Argentina, including abandonment, demographic diminution and/or decreased intensity of occupation, as well as isolated cases of increased occupational intensity.  These responses occurred at different times during the middle Holocene and differed between ecological zones, especially between the western mountains and the eastern plains.  The fact that similar situations have been observed in North America invites a comparison of data from the two hemispheres.  The analyses presented in this paper draw on theoretical and methodological tools formulated for such areas as the Great Basin of North America in an attempt to understand larger trajectories of hunter-gatherer adaptive response to environmental change.