Vegetable resources and tecnofactures at an archaeological site of the Southern Argentinean Puna, Andean Centre-South area

Abstract

This investigation analyses the vegetable resources used for tecnofactures during the prehistoric past, based on remains of artefacts recovered at the archaeological site “Punta de la Peña 4”, layers 0 - 4, dated to ca. 3900 – 500 years BP. The site is located in the proximity of the village of “Antofagasta de la Sierra”, Catamarca, Argentina (26° 11’ 16’’ S and 67° 20’ 51.3’’W) at 3650 m altitude. The site locality belongs to the Southern Argentinean Puna and, according to the environmental characteristics, it belongs to the Salty Puna. The particular objectives were to identify plant species used as raw material, their collection area, and possible use of each artefact considering the recovered context at
the archaeological site and the ethnobotanical information. Mobility and socio-economic exchanges taking into account the recovered non-local plant species is also discussed. The comparative anatomical and morphological analysis of present day and archaeological plants revealed that the species used for tecnofactures belong to the families Asteraceae, Cactaceae, Cyperaceae, Fabaceae, Juncaceae, Poaceae, Solanaceae and Typhaceae. Possible collection areas for the archaeological species suggest that long distance human migrations decreased during the Late Holocene, being replaced by itineraries of
ruled mobility related to pastoralism.