Southern Patagonian Hunter-Gatherers: Distributional Archaeology in the North Shore of the Viedma Lake (Santa Cruz, Argentina)

Summary

Results obtained through a distributional archaeology project along the north shore of the Viedma lake basin are introduced. The aim of the research is to gain knowledge about hunter-gatherer landscape use during the Holocene and to incorporate the basin within a broader discussion of the population of the western side of Southern Patagonia. Different altitudinal sectors along an East-West axis -from the steppe to the forest- were surveyed in order to understand seasonal mobility: 1) the coast of the lake (255-300 masl), 2) pampas (300-700 masl)-, large open spaces formed by glacial deposits-, 3) basaltic plateaus basis (750 masl), and 4) the plateaus (950-1000 masl). Lithic artifactual densities are evaluated considering local geomorphology, new data on chronology, technology, rock art and guanaco (Lama guanicoe) archaeofauna. All these data is framed on a regional hunter-gatherer landscape use model that is compared to the ones built for neighbour lake basins like the Tar-San Martín (to the north) and Argentino (to the south).

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 83rd Annual Meeting, Washington, DC (2018)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 19936