Human Dispersal in the Atlantic Slope of Patagonia and the Role of Lithic Availability

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to understand the role of different resources in the human ranking of habitats during the peopling of the Atlantic slope of Central-South Patagonia, as well as the technological strategies used during early human dispersal. We studied the distribution of early sites in the Deseado Massif, where there is a relatively high concentration of evidence of early human activity. We analyzed published information related to site chronology and distribution, presence/absence of hearths, raw-material provenance, the presence of bifacial artifacts and reduction activities, the location of corridors, and least-cost paths among sites. Results show that water would have been the most important resource in selecting locations. The availability of high-quality rocks would have been an asset, which also helped to generate a highly visible archaeological record in which bifaces were important. These resources were probably exploited using a multidirectional half-radius pattern of movements, basically restricted to the eastern margin of Massif.

KEYWORDS:

• Patagonia
• initial human dispersal
• lithic resources

Acknowledgements

The original version of this manuscript was presented at the 11th International Symposium on Knappable Materials, held in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Funds were provided by project PICT 2015–2038 (Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Técnica) and PIP 0447 (CONICET). Piedra Grande S.A. and Minera Triton S.A. provided additional help for lodging. We thank three anonymous reviewers, whose comments helped to improve the quality of the paper. Thanks also to Pablo Ramírez (Dirección de Turismo de Gobernador Gragores), the owners of La Esmeralda and 17 de Marzo ranches, and to Claudio Iglesias and workers of Piedra Grande S.A. Also we thank all the people who took part of the fieldworks.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Nora V. Franco is a Principal Researcher at the CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires. She obtained her PhD at the University of Buenos Aires and, as part of her formation, she took lithic courses and was part of excavation teams outside of the country. She focuses on lithic studies and is interested in the processes of human peopling of America, human mobility, technology, and strategies of utilization of the space.

Luis A. Borrero obtained a PhD at Universidad de Buenos Aires, Argentina and works as Emeritus Researcher at CONICET and as Emeritus Professor at the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina. His main interests are the process of human colonization of South America, the archaeology of hunter-gatherers, and taphonomy.

Gustavo F. Lucero is a Professor at the University of Cuyo. He graduated in archaeology and his PhD dissertation was in Geography. His main research topic deals with the application of GIS in archaeological analysis, and he has publications on this topic. He also works in rescue archaeology.

Notes

1 Radiocarbon ages were calibrated at the two-sigma probability level in calendar years BP (cal yr BP) using CALIB 7.0 (Stuiver and Reimer 1993) and the Southern Hemisphere (SHcal13) atmospheric calibration curve of Hogg et al. (2013).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Agencia Nacional de Promoción Científica y Tecnológica: [grant number PICT 2015-2038]; Consejo Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [grant number PIP 0447].