David R. Yesner

Stable isotope analysis of human bone and ethnohistoric subsistence patterns in Tierra del Fuego

Abstract Ethnohistoric records from Tierra del Fuego suggest that precontact Fuegians could be subdivided into three major groups: the Yamana, maritime hunter-gatherers of the Beagle Channel and islands to the south; the Selk’nam, terrestrial hunter-gatherers of southernmost Patagonia; and the Haush, a little-known group that seems to have combined elements of both Yamana and Selk’nam lifeways. However, the observed ethnographic patterns reflect societies whose way of life was significantly altered by European contact, habitat alteration, and exploitation of some of the key resources upon which Fuegian peoples were historically dependent. To test the linkage between ethnohistorically recorded subsistence patterns and prehistoric lifeways in the region, stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes were assayed from human burials that date within the last 1500 years before European contact. Isotopic analyses substantially confirm the ethnohistorically documented patterns, but also reveal some anomalies, such as Yamana populations who may have been more dependent on terrestrial resources (i.e., guanaco). Data from the Haush region suggest primary dependence on marine resources, like the Yamana, while the Selk’nam demonstrate limited use of such resources. Stable isotopic analysis can thus be used to test hypotheses concerning the validity of archaeological and ethnohistoric data.

Prehistoric Maritime Adaptations of the Subarctic and Subantarctic Zones: The Aleutian/Fuegian Connection Reconsidered

In 1975, Allen P. McCartney proposed that Aleutian and Fuegian populations shared a number of common subsistence and technology features, resulting from convergence in adaptation to maritime resources in cold archipelagos. As a result of recent excavations on the north Beagle Channel in Argentine Tierra del Fuego, as well as reconsideration of the historic and ethnographic records, it is now possible to flesh out such a comparative analysis in much greater detail. Both Aleutian and Fuegian populations exploited pinnipeds (sea lions and fur seals) and shellfish (mussels and limpets) in a cold, windy coastal zone, and both regions show an intriguing convergence in the history of subsistence, with a shift from sea mammal hunting to shellfish use occurring around 4,000 years ago. Although differences in resource use (i.e., greater dependence on terrestrial mammals [guanaco] in Tierra del Fuego versus the use of storable anadromous fish in the Aleutians) led to the development of greater sociopolitical complexity among the Aleuts, there is now archaeological evidence to suggest that greater complexity existed in precontact Fuegian populations as well. Most of the differences observed between the groups are probably the result of historical transformations brought about by the depredations of European sealers and whalers beginning in the late eighteenth century.

Cold and wet: The case for circumpolar maritime archaeology

William Fitzhugh, ed. Prehistoric Maritime Adaptations of the Circumpolar Zone. The Hague and Paris: Mouton Publishers, 1975. Distributed in North America by Aldine Publishing Company, x + 405 pp. Tables, figures, maps, references, and indices.

Human dispersal into interior Alaska: antecedent conditions, mode of colonization, and adaptations

29.50.