Assessing Shellfish Discard for Discerning between Field Processing or Residential Relocation in the Subtropical Pacific Coast of South America

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Variability in site structure and shellfish assemblages from hunter-gatherer sites in the Pacific coast of Los Vilos (31°50 ’S, South America) has been attributed to changes in field processing decisions across the Holocene. However, these changes have not been evaluated considering explicit models. Prey choice and central place foraging models predict which resources to exploit and how would be the best way to transport them, respectively. This paper will combine them to explore the variability of shellfish assemblages at three time periods (12,000-9,000, 8,000-4,000 and 4,000-2,000 cal BP) in which residential and logistical organization alternated over coastal land use decisions. Differences are particularly observable on the treatment of the loco (Concholepas concholepas), an abalone-type mollusk with the largest size and higher meat yields on this coast. Other shellfish, like bivalves and less productive gastropods, are recorded only at residential sites at different points in time, which indicates that they were not subjected to field processing. Finally, the exploitation of higher variability, including low-ranking specimens between 4,000-2,000 cal BP, may be explained by a major shift in the use of coastal environments including a more active foraging role of children when residential sites were located closest to the shoreline.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 23648