Looking at Interethnic Relations in the Southern Border Through Glass Remains: The NineteenthCentury Pampa Region, Argen

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Looking at Interethnic Relations in the Southern Border Through Glass Remains: The NineteenthCentury Pampa Region, Argentina Victoria Pedrotta1,3 and Vanesa Bagaloni2

Arroyo Nieves 2 is an open-air site located in a ravine of a small stream in the Pampa region. Its stratigraphy and archaeological remains assigned it to an aboriginal occupation dated in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. At the time, some indigenous groups were settled in strategic borderline areas by the government, on the basis of reciprocal rights and duties. Food and other supplies were given to the Indians to avoid cattle and women raids, thereby keeping the peace. The findings at Arroyo Nieves 2 include bones, from both domestic and wild species, lithic instruments and debris, fragments of stoneware bottles, refined earthenware sherds, buttons, small pieces of metal and numerous glass remains from wine, beer, bitter, and gin bottles, flasks, glasses, and food containers. This paper presents a study of the glass remains, data that have proven to provide evidence on a wide range of themes, including chronology, trade networks and activities, consumption behaviors, and discard patterns. KEY WORDS: aboriginal settlements; glass remains; interethnic relations; Argentina.

INTRODUCTION The nineteenth century implied the loss of political autonomy and military control of indigenous territories in the Pampa and northern Patagonic regions, 1 CONICET/INCUAPA (Investigaciones Arqueol´ ogicas y Paleontol´ogicas del Cuaternario Pampeano),

Departamento de Arqueolog´ıa de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. 2 Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo de la Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. 3 To whom correspondence should be addressed at CONICET/INCUAPA (Investigaciones Arqueol´ogicas y Paleontol´ogicas del Cuaternario Pampeano), Departamento de Arqueolog´ıa de la Facultad de Ciencias Sociales, Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina, Av. Del Valle 5737 Olavarr´ıa, B7400JW1; e-mail: [email protected]. 177 C 2005 Springer Science+Business Media, Inc. 1092-7697/05/0900-0177/0 

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Pedrotta and Bagaloni

because of the advance of the Hispanic-Creole population ending in the military campaigns in the 1870s and first half of the 1880s (CGE, 1974; Walter, 1970). This gradual offensive dynamic implied the existence, since the colonial period, of successive borderline areas (Fig. 1), where different ethnic and social groups converged, including Indians, army, tradesmen, landowners, and farmers. Most indigenous societies in the Pampa and northern Patagonic areas shifted from a hunter–gatherer economy to herding cows, horses, and sheep, and developed an intense trade of both livestock products and leather, textile, and silver

Fig. 1. Southern borderline in Buenos Aires by the third quarter of the nineteenth century (based on Walter, 1970).

Looking at Interethnic Relations in the Southern Border

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manufactures (Mandrini, 1987,