The use of marine mollusks by Late Holocene hunter-gatherer groups at inland North Patagonia (Río Negro province, Argentina)

In this paper we present the results of the study of marine mollusk shells from five archaeological sites corresponding to the Late Holocene and four public and private collections coming from the middle valley of the Negro River and other areas of Northern Patagonia. Perforated elements (beads and...

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Autores principales: Di Lorenzo, Maitén, Mange, Emiliano, Hammond, Heidi, Prates, Luciano
Formato: Artículo publishedVersion
Lenguaje:Español
Publicado: Instituto de Arqueología, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, Universidad de Buenos Aires 2022
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Acceso en línea:https://revistascientificas.filo.uba.ar/index.php/Arqueologia/article/view/9926
https://repositoriouba.sisbi.uba.ar/gsdl/cgi-bin/library.cgi?a=d&c=arqueo&d=9926_oai
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Sumario:In this paper we present the results of the study of marine mollusk shells from five archaeological sites corresponding to the Late Holocene and four public and private collections coming from the middle valley of the Negro River and other areas of Northern Patagonia. Perforated elements (beads and pendants), present at most of the sites in the area, are not included in the analysis. The main goal of this work is to assess the varied uses of these objects during the Late Holocene. With that aim, all the specimens were described morphologically and determined taxonomically, and then the potential functions were evaluated. The results show the predominance of volutids (gastropod mollusks) from the Atlantic Ocean, most of them with evidence of human modifications. On this basis, we propose that mollusks were transported inland, and used in hunter-gatherer residential camps as raw material for making utilitarian artifacts, mainly containers. Finally, there are not clear evidences of the symbolic use of shells as mortuary-related artifacts.