Resource intensification and zooarchaeological record in the southern margins of pre-Hispanic Andean agriculture
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Resource intensification and zooarchaeological record in the southern margins of pre-Hispanic Andean agriculture José Manuel López 1
&
Gustavo Neme 2 & Adolfo F. Gil 2
Received: 28 December 2018 / Accepted: 10 May 2019 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2019
Abstract Central Western Argentina is an area archeologically defined as one of the southernmost limits of farming in the preHispanic Americas. Optimal foraging models help to predict important changes in faunal use prior to the adoption of agriculture related to resource depression and environmental changes. This paper evaluates changes in pre-Hispanic human subsistence from a zooarchaeological perspective and explores archeological record trends from the northern area of Central Western Argentina. Using zooarchaeological information in Northern Mendoza (Central Western Argentina), trends related to the human exploitation of faunal resources were explored in connection with time and space. Two highranked resource indexes were calculated: the artiodactyl index and a high-ranked resources index. The results show a decrease in the dependence on high-ranked resources by human groups after ca. 2000 BP and an increase in richness, indicating a diet breath expansion. Long-term trends in the density of radiocarbon dates suggest a considerable population growth after ca. 2000 BP. These trends are consistent with the contemporary changes reported by other archaeological proxies in Northern Mendoza. The results of the zooarchaeological analysis confirm changes in human organization around 2000 years BP that reflect an intensification process. Keywords Zooarchaeology . Intensification . Human behavioral ecology . Diet breath . Central Western Argentina . Low-ranked resources
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-019-00857-w) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * José Manuel López [email protected]; [email protected] Gustavo Neme [email protected] Adolfo F. Gil [email protected] 1
Instituto Argentino de Investigaciones de las Zonas Áridas, Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (IADIZA-CONICET) - Instituto de Arqueología y Etnología (Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad Nacional de Cuyo), CCT CONICET Mendoza, Parque General San Martín, Av. Ruíz Leal s/n, CP 5500 Mendoza, Argentina
2
Instituto de Evolución, Ecología Histórica y Ambiente (IDEVEA-CONICET/UTN FRSR), CP 5600 San Rafael, Argentina
Introduction Resource intensification as a human response to the imbalance between resources and demography is a heuristic concept used to explain temporal and spatial variations in the archeological record (Morgan 2015). The subject of intensification as a theoretical key concept has aroused strong debate in anthropology. This is due to the fact that it is used to understand and discuss significant processes and changes in the history of humankind, such as the origins and spread
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