Modeling the Use of Seaweed for Fire by Hunter-Gatherers in the Atacama Desert

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

The use of fire is essential for contemporary human populations. Yet the presence of an active population in the coastal Atacama desert, with limited land-based combustible, leaves us with the intriguing possibility that the ancestral inhabitants of this region used the abundant seaweed brought by the tides as a resource to sustain fires. To test this possibility, we introduce a simulation model consisting of three primary components: land-based combustible resource production, accumulation of combustibles along the seashore, and their consumption by human communities. The model proposes the use of a logistic law to describe how resources increase over time and provide a parameter range of consumption and use of each of the components that can be tested against empirical evidence.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Archaeophycology: New (Ethno)Archaeological Approaches to Understand the Contribution of Seaweed to the Subsistence and Social Life of Coastal Populations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38646.0