From owl prey to human food: taphonomy of archaeological small mammal remains from the late Holocene wetlands of arid en
- PDF / 1,460,852 Bytes
- 19 Pages / 595.276 x 790.866 pts Page_size
- 11 Downloads / 205 Views
(2020) 12:276
ORIGINAL PAPER
From owl prey to human food: taphonomy of archaeological small mammal remains from the late Holocene wetlands of arid environments in Central Western Argentina José Manuel López 1
&
Horacio Chiavazza 2
Received: 23 April 2020 / Accepted: 2 October 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The present study analyses small mammal bone and tooth accumulations recovered in three open-air archaeological sites from northern Mendoza (Argentina) in the central Monte Desert, one of the most arid rangelands of South America. The sites, with radiocarbon dates between ca. 2100 and 400 years BP, are located on the margins of a now-extinct swamp that formed a more widespread wetland environment in the past. In order to recognize the agents responsible for such bone and tooth accumulations, a taphonomic analysis was conducted evaluating relative abundances of skeletal elements, breakage patterns, digestive corrosion, signs of anthropic activity and post-depositional processes. The taphonomic analysis allowed the detection of owls and humans as the agents responsible for small mammal accumulations. On the one hand, the low proportion and degree of digested diagnostic elements, among other taphonomic processes, suggest owl pellet-derived small mammal assemblages. On the other hand, the thermo-altered elements detected, some showing a differential burning pattern, the abundance of large-sized and gregarious small mammals and the identification of cut-marks on a caviid femur shaft are possibly due to human exploitation/ consumption of small mammals. Keywords Zooarchaeology . Microvertebrates . Taphonomy . Raptors . Resource intensification . Monte Desert . Mendoza
Introduction Vertebrate bone remains recovered in archaeological contexts have a long history of research interest (e.g. Olsen 1971;
* José Manuel López [email protected]; [email protected] Horacio Chiavazza [email protected] 1
Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas (IADIZA-CONICET); Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Instituto de Arqueología y Etnología; CCT CONICET Mendoza, Av. Ruíz Leal s/n. Parque General San Martín. CP, 5500 Mendoza, Argentina
2
Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Instituto de Arqueología y Etnología; Centro de Investigaciones Ruinas de San Francisco, Museo del Área Fundacional de Mendoza, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo, CP, 5500 Mendoza, Argentina
Gifford-González 2018). Increasingly, zooarchaeological and taphonomic analyses have been established as valuable tools to understand the processes and agents involved in the formation of the archaeological record, the evolution of human and environmental systems through time and the dynamics of the human and animal world existing in the past (Efremov 1940; Behrensmeyer et al. 2000). However, small vertebrate remains recovered from archaeological sites, including small mammals (≤ 1 kg), have generally been overlooked in archaeological studies for
Data Loading...
