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Technology, subsistence, and mobility of Middle to Late Holocene hunter-gatherers in the southern Pampas: new archaeological data from Las Toscas shallow lake (Argentina)

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Abstract

Despite a long history of hunter-gatherer occupation in the Pampas region starting at the end of the Pleistocene, the known archaeological record is still sparse for some periods, such as the Middle Holocene. Here, we present new archaeological data from Las Toscas shallow lake, located in the inland plains of the southern Pampas, where systematic fieldwork revealed an abundant and diverse archaeological record resulting from hunter-gatherer occupation. The aims of this study were to establish the chronology of the occupations; to evaluate the use of faunal and lithic resources; and to contribute to the understanding of hunter-gatherer land use patterns. Archaeological evidence indicates that procurement, domestic, and ritual activities were conducted around the shallow lake during the Middle and Late Holocene, including hunting of terrestrial game; tool manufacture and repair; storing and use of mineral pigments; and likely human burial practices. Evidence also suggests that the use of this locality was not continuous but redundant and that this shallow lake was a persistent place for hunter-gatherers. Faunal data agrees with regional models that propose that Lama guanicoe was the main food resource during the second half of the Middle Holocene, although a taphonomic bias in favor of larger vertebrates cannot be ruled out. The lithic assemblages suggest that artifacts entered the locality mostly as part of individual toolkits and indicate a strong preference for orthoquartzite. Finally, bone remains of extinct fauna were recovered at the locality; however, a functional association between these remains and cultural material could not be demonstrated.

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Notes

  1. In this paper we follow the formal Holocene subdivision accepted by the International Union of Geological Sciences (Walker et al. 2018).

  2. The chronology of this hiatus has varied in the different papers by Barrientos and colleagues. In the earliest papers, these authors proposed the existence of a significant gap between ca. 6000 and ca. 5000 14C years BP in the southeastern Pampas based on a smaller sample of uncalibrated radiocarbon dates (Barrientos 2001; Barrientos and Perez 2005). Here, the more recent proposal based on a larger dataset of calibrated ages was followed (Barrientos and Masse 2014).

  3. Sites dated exclusively through organic material from sediments and soils were not considered in the discussion because these dates only provide minimal ages of the sedimentary unit containing the archaeological materials, but they do not directly date the human occupation.

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Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank all the students who participated in the fieldwork. Thanks also to Oscar Oldano, Betty Queipo, and the Municipality of San Cayetano, for their support in this research, and to the Nielsen family, who kindly allowed us to work on their property. We are also grateful to Gustavo Politis, Cristian Kaufmann, and two anonymous reviewers who provided useful comments that helped to improve the original version of the manuscript.

Funding

This work was supported by the Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica [grant numbers PICT 2010-0235, PICT 2013-0199, PICT 2015-2777] and the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (grant number PUE N°22920160100079).

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  1. INCUAPA-CONICET, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales (UNICEN), Av. Del Valle 5737 (B7400JWI), Olavarría, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Agustina Massigoge, Daniel J. Rafuse, Juan M. Rodríguez & Cristian M. Favier Dubois

  2. División Arqueología, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo (UNLP), Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica (ANPCyT), Paseo del Bosque s/n (1900), La Plata, Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Rocío F. Torino

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  1. Agustina Massigoge
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Massigoge, A., Rafuse, D.J., Rodríguez, J.M. et al. Technology, subsistence, and mobility of Middle to Late Holocene hunter-gatherers in the southern Pampas: new archaeological data from Las Toscas shallow lake (Argentina). Archaeol Anthropol Sci 13, 69 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-021-01314-3

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