Geographic scale and zooarchaeological analysis of Late Holocene foraging adaptations in western Argentina

Dietary patterns in human populations from northwest Patagonia during Holocene: an approach using Binford’s frames of reference and Bayesian isotope mixing models

“…According to this, an imbalance between demographic density of human populations and the resources resulted in a greater pressure on resources of higher return, and thus, the diet was broadened to include a larger amount of low return resources, and new technologies for food processing were incorporated into the subsistence strategies. The occurrence of this process is supported by archeobotanical and some zooarcheological data (Giardina 2012;Llano 2011;Llano and Andreoni 2012;Llano and Ugan 2010;Neme 2007), although other studies have questioned some aspects of the faunal intensification (Fernández 2012;Otaola et al 2015). Even though the consumption of birds, fishes, and corn has been proposed for South Mendoza (Giardina et al 2014;Gil 2003;Novellino et al 2004), the isotopes analyzed here suggest that their contribution to the diet of hunter-gatherers was very low.…”

Human biogeography and faunal exploitation in Diamante River basin, central western Argentina

“…The faunal analyses presented in this paper are discussed within a biogeographic perspective and pivoting the intensification concept, which was broadly approached in several research projects of central western Argentina (Neme & Gil, ; Neme et al, ; Otaola, ; Otaola et al , Otaola et al, ; Wolverton et al, ). Morgan () proposes that the intensification concept should be used following a strict “Boserupian” definition, which entails declining foraging efficiency, understood as the increase in total productivity per unit of time and space (i.e., Boserup, ; Broughton, ).…”

“…The prey rank model made for central western Argentina exhibits something like this. Armadillos ( Zaedyus pichiy , Chaetophractus villosus , and Chaetophractus vellerosus ), with a body weight around 1 to 3 kg, are among the smallest prey animals, but they are easy to capture and have relatively low handling costs, making their net return high (Otaola et al, ; Corbat & Zangrando, ). Rheidae eggs are also easy to obtain when they are available in the spring season (del Hoyo et al, ) and have low handling cost.…”

“…Whether or not mobility declined deserves further discussion. Guanaco overhunting is not clear, and plant use intensification in the Diamante River is not yet apparent (Gil, Neme, Ugan, & Tykot, ; Otaola, Wolverton, Giardina, & Neme, ; Ugan et al, ; Wolverton, Otaola, Neme, Giardina, & Gil, ).…”

Sampling to redundancy in an applied zooarchaeology: A case study from a freshwater shell ring in the Mississippi Delta, southeastern USA

“…The issue of "time-space-averaging" (Christian and Harris, 2005;Dorsey, 2000;Lyman, 2003;Milller and Payne, 1993;Otaola et al, 2015;Peacock et al, 2013) is especially important when dealing with faunal deposits. Shell rings, such as the one at Kinlock, generally represent numerous households engaging in multiple episodes of collection and discard, over various time spans.…”