Gustavo Politis

Following the Tracks of the First South Americans

In this article, a summary of the geologic, paleontological, and human history of an area of the Atlantic coast in the Pampean plain, Argentina is discussed. This area presents very interesting characteristics. On the one hand, the area includes the Monte Hermoso cliffs studied by Charles Darwin in 1832, which compose the set of localities related to the development of the theory of evolution. On the other hand, in the referred area, an extraordinary amount of human and Pleistocene mammal footprints are registered. Also in that section, four diachronic stages have been registered which depict the evolutionary scenario during the last five million years. Four paleontological and archeological sites are described, showing the palaeoenvironmental changes that occurred there regarding fauna associations and human settlement. The first scenario is found at Monte Hermoso cliff, whose sediments contain fossil remains of the autochthonous South American fauna. The second scenario shows a remarkable change in the drainage system where the fauna is composed of immigrated taxa due to the Great American Biotic Interchange. Both last scenarios show human presence; the third one shows faint evidences (one human trackway and two isolated footprints), and in the last one the hunter–gatherers are fully represented as a well-established population on the Pampean coast during the Early Holocene, registered at La Olla and Monte Hermoso I sites. In this way, the sites summarized in this work allow the reconstruction of four remarkable evolutionary scenarios in South America, as regards landscapes, fauna associations, and human population.

Pre-Hispanic horticulture in the Paraná Delta (Argentina): archaeological and historical evidence

Abstract Many American cultivated species have been domesticated in the Neotropical Lowlands. While the southern limit of some cultivars (e.g. maize) is relatively well known for the Andean Region, the south-western limit of lowland horticulture has been poorly established in South America. Sixteenth-century European accounts mentioned the presence of cultivated plants in the Delta of the Paraná River, but until now this had not been confirmed by direct archaeobotanical data. This paper presents and discusses the results of starch grains analysis from six archaeological sites of the Paraná Delta (Argentina), ranging from 1302 to 1492 years cal. ad, which confirm the pre-Hispanic presence of cultivars in the area. Wild (algarrobo; South American mesquite) and domesticated (maize and beans) plant remains were found in ceramic containers and on grinding tools from those sites. Our research contributes new data on the late dispersion of cultivated species in the Paraná Delta, an area so far excluded from continental models for the dispersal of cultivars in the Americas.

The Arrival of Homo sapiens into the Southern Cone at 14,000 Years Ago

The Arroyo Seco 2 site contains a rich archaeological record, exceptional for South America, to explain the expansion of Homo sapiens into the Americas and their interaction with extinct Pleistocene mammals. The following paper provides a detailed overview of material remains found in the earliest cultural episodes at this multi-component site, dated between ca. 12,170 14C yrs B.P. (ca. 14,064 cal yrs B.P.) and 11,180 14C yrs B.P. (ca. 13,068 cal yrs B.P.). Evidence of early occupations includes the presence of lithic tools, a concentration of Pleistocene species remains, human-induced fractured animal bones, and a selection of skeletal parts of extinct fauna. The occurrence of hunter-gatherers in the Southern Cone at ca. 14,000 cal yrs B.P. is added to the growing list of American sites that indicate a human occupation earlier than the Clovis dispersal episode, but posterior to the onset of the deglaciation of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) in the North America.

Early Asiatic Migration to the Americas: A View from South America

During last three decades, American archaeology has generated a large body of information, which has fuelled debate on the early peopling of the New World. This has allowed scientists to propose and validate macro-regional (continental) dispersal models, empirically grounded in multiple lines of evidence. On the basis of reviewing archaeological and bioarchaeological data, and emphasizing the southern South American information, we summarize and discuss the main topics of the current debate. We presently consider that the first humans arrived on the northern continent from the Asian northwest some time at the end of the Pleistocene, approximately 15,000–14,000 14C years BP. A short time later (ca. 12,500 14C years), they had already reached the Southern Cone of South America.

Archaeology and Politics in Argentina During the Last 50 Years

The aim of this paper is to discuss the relationship between archaeological practice and theory, on the one hand, and the political context in Argentina since 1958, on the other. Thus, 1958 highlights the starting point for our analysis with the objective of exploring the relationship between archaeological praxis and theory within a sociopolitical context. Special political circumstances existed particularly in Argentina, but also in the southern region of South America, where democratic governments (some fully while other partly democratic) alternated with strong military regimes over the past half-century and significantly influenced the development of archaeology in the region. Such context provides, in our view, interesting data to understand the political aspect underlying the origin and development of national archaeologies. This paper is within a critical perspective (in the sense used by Fernandez Martinez. 2006. Una Arqueologia Critica. Ciencia, Etica y Politica en la Construccion del Pasado. Editorial Critica, Barcelona.) that sees the relationship between archaeology and politics as unavoidable and where the past is an interpretative construction dependent upon the sociopolitical context of knowledge production. Any attempt to study relationships between archaeology and politics and between archaeology and the public cannot avoid considering some of the related issues, such as the idea of the “others”, politics of culture, modelling of the country by the ruling classes, and the position of the country in the world context.

The role and place of ethnoarchaeology in current archaeological debate

Fil: Politis, Gustavo Gabriel. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Cientificas y Tecnicas. Centro Cientifico Tecnologico Conicet - Tandil. Investigaciones Arqueologicas y Paleontologicas del Cuaternario Pampeano. Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Investigaciones Arqueologicas y Paleontologicas del Cuaternario Pampeano; Argentina

Ethnoarchaeology: Approaches to Fieldwork

Field methods of ethnoarchaeology are based on those of ethnography, but because of the type of information that is sought, there are some record types that are more specific to archaeology. In other words, fieldwork in ethnoarchaeology is also based on participant observation in living societies, with an attitude of minimal interference in the community under study and a clear research design. However, little has been written and reflected on ethnoarchaeological fieldwork (for exceptions see David and Kramer 2001, pp. 63–90), and in general it is not clearly specified in the reports. There are three defining elements of ethnoarchaeology that have implications in their field methods: the study of a living culture, with reference to the material derivatives of human behavior, and (when it is in traditional society) the postcolonial context.