The procurement of high-quality lithic resources is amongst the most indicative processes of decision-making in the archaeology of early human groups peopling the Americas. Directly dated deposits from quarry workshops have been absent of the late Pleistocene record of South America. We present the results of the excavations of a high-quality translucent quartz crystal workshop that yielded radiocarbon-dated coherently layered stratigraphic deposits that shed light into the behavior of the initial stages of lithic procurement. Based on a detailed analysis of the context of the Valiente site (32° S, Chile, South America), we discuss the stages of bifacial production of point technology. The deposit produced evidence of cumulative occupations over the period between 12,630 and 11,320 calibrated years before present. This ~1,300-year span is coincidental with a major environmental step-wise drying trend as indicated by the local and regional pollen records. Furthermore, it is synchronous to the process in which natural landscapes became the earliest taskscapes in the region, thereby encompassing major cultural changes related to the organization of the land use. These results are discussed in the frame of contemporaneous archaeological data to discuss specific aspects of technology and decision-making of the earliest settlers of South America.
Indigenous land use occurring on temporal scales over centuries or millennia shapes forests in specific ways and influences the dynamics of forest ecosystems. It is challenging to study such land use, but analysis of “culturally modified trees” (CMTs) can give precise spatial and temporal information on past land use by indigenous people. The aim of this study was to increase our knowledge of indigenous use of land and resources in Nothofagus forests by identifying CMTs and analyzing the forest structure dynamics in an ancient Kawésqar settlement site in western Patagonia. Our results show that there are CMTs at Río Batchelor and that the forest structure varies significantly within the site, indicating that Kawésqar people altered the forest by extracting various resources. We conclude that CMT studies have great potential in Nothofagus forests in southernmost America, but also face specific challenges due to environmental conditions and lack of corroborating historical information.
Los bosques templados costeros pluviales de la Patagonia austral y Tierra del Fuego cons- tituyen una expresión florística y ecológica de características propias y muy distintas al resto de las formaciones vegetales del continente americano (Pisano, 1997). Aquellos de carác- ter “primario” o en estados sucesionales avan- zados son actualmente remanentes escasos de los procesos antrópicos de degradación ambiental relacionados a la extracción y explo- tación de recursos naturales, que sobreviven gracias a su aislamiento de caminos o rutas de explotación, o bien, por su resguardo geográ- fico a eventos climáticos de gran envergadura (i.e. volteo masivo por temporales de viento) (Pisano, 1997; Promis, Cruz, Reif &Gärtner, 2008). Conservan en su estructura información de enorme y singular valor ecológico, siendo testigos vivos de procesos ambientales y paleoclimáticos, estrechamente ligados a las dinámicas históricas del paisaje litoral de los canales patagónicos (Holz, Haberle, Veblen, De Pol Holz, Southon, 2012; Koch & Kilian, 2002; Villagrán, 2018)but rarely on both. In this study of fire history in western Patagonia (47-48° S. A su vez, es de esperar, que dichas dinámicas podrían comprender en parte o en su totali- dad, una historia estrechamente ligada al ser humano, al menos desde el retroceso glacial y posterior ocupación de los canales patagó- nicos por cazadores recolectores marinos o pueblos canoeros (Emperaire, 1955).
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