Geoarchaeology of the Southern American Frontier: The Late Quaternary Archaeological Landscapes of the Mack Aike Canyon, Santa Cruz, Patagonia, Argentina

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Geoarchaeological investigations in the Mack Aike Canyon were conducted in March 2023. Located in southernmost Patagonia, Mack Aike is ca. 13 miles (21 km) long and was repeatedly occupied by hunter-gatherer populations for at least 3,300 years BP. Alluvial deposits and complex sequences of wetland and eolian deposits within the canyon boundaries were recorded. Three buried paleosols were identified as marker horizons throughout the canyon. A buried peat deposit at 143 cmbs was also identified through augering and radiocarbon dated to the Middle Holocene. Distribution of the archaeological record throughout the canyon is fairly continuous although density varies likely due to behavioral and postdepositional formation processes. Mack Aike provides protection from a harsh climate and offers abundant resources from an extensive network of wetlands and channels, surrounded by a complex volcanic and glacial landscape. A combination of environmental and archaeological characteristics of Mack Aike facilitated its persistent use and its role in regional mobility until the Contact Period. In 2024, additional fieldwork and radiocarbon dating will be conducted to test subsurface locations for buried archaeological materials to continue building the chronology of the landscape history and archaeological record of Mack Aike during the Late Quaternary.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• SAA 2024: Individual Abstracts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 39941.0