Browsing by Author "Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia"
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- Item12,000 years away from the sea: Long-term circulation of Pacific shells in the Semiarid North of Chile (South America)(2025) Hernández Castillo, Daniel; Troncoso, Andrés; Méndez, César; Pascual Grau, Daniel; Armstrong, Felipe; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Grasset, Sebastián; Pérez, Isidora; Vera, Francisca; Delgado, Manuela; Escudero, Antonia; Pino, Mariela; Larach, PabloMarine resources provide a baseline for understanding the sociohistorical trajectories of Andean societies using Pacific coastal environments. This study examines seashell distributions in northern Chile's semiarid region, revealing inland circulation patterns established over twelve thousand years. This included an extensive review of published information and new data assessed through GIS and least-cost paths. Sorting 950 specimens from 32 sites into 32 taxa, we identified consistent mobility patterns across time periods. In addition to the primary west-east trajectory from the sea to the interior, a secondary north-south inland vector was in use since the early Holocene. This study also revealed intensified shell transport during the middle Holocene, and a shift toward down-the-line exchange with reduced shell frequency at interior sites by the late Holocene, particularly in the Limarí Valley. Additionally, shell artifacts - ornaments and tools - were found more consistently in interior contexts. Together, these findings shed light on long-term human adaptation strategies in semiarid mountainous environments.
- ItemBioavailable Strontium, Human Paleogeography, and Migrations in the Southern Andes: A Machine Learning and GIS Approach(2021) Barberena, Ramiro; Cardillo, Marcelo; Lucero, Gustavo; le Roux, Petrus J.; Tessone, Augusto; Llano, Carina; Gasco, Alejandra; Marsh, Erik J.; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Novellino, Paula; Frigole, Cecilia; Winocur, Diego; Benitez, Anahi; Cornejo, Luis; Falabella, Fernanda; Sanhueza, Lorena; Santana Sagredo, Francisca; Troncoso, Andres; Cortegoso, Valeria; Duran, Victor A.; Mendez, CesarThe Andes are a unique geological and biogeographic feature of South America. From the perspective of human geography, this mountain range provides ready access to highly diverse altitudinally arranged ecosystems. The combination of a geologically and ecologically diverse landscape provides an exceptional context to explore the potential of strontium isotopes to track the movements of people and the conveyance of material culture. Here we develop an isotopic landscape of bioavailable strontium (87Sr/86Sr) that is applied to reconstruct human paleogeography across time in the southern Andes of Argentina and Chile (31 degrees-34 degrees S). These results come from a macro-regional sampling of rodents (N = 65) and plants (N = 26) from modern and archeological contexts. This "Southern Andean Strontium Transect" extends over 350 km across the Andes, encompassing the main geological provinces between the Pacific coast (Chile) and the eastern lowlands (Argentina). We follow a recently developed approach to isoscape construction based on Random Forest regression and GIS analysis. Our results suggest that bioavailable strontium is tightly linked with bedrock geology and offers a highly resolved proxy to track human paleogeography involving the levels of territories or daily mobility and anomalous events that disrupt home ranges, such as migration. The southern Andes provide an ideal geological setting to develop this approach, since the geological variation in rock age and composition produces distinctive isotopic signatures for each main biogeographical region. Finally, we apply this framework to a set of results from human remains from the Uspallata Valley in Mendoza (Argentina), to assess the incidence of migration in the key period of the consolidation of agropastoral economies between AD 800 and 1400. The application of the isoscape to the values from human remains confirms the persistence of human groups with relatively restricted territories encompassing Uspallata and the adjacent Precordillera between AD 800 and 1500. We also identify a pulse of human migration between AD 1280 and 1420, shortly preceding the Inka conquest. Looking forward, we expect to converge with ongoing efforts in South America to build a continental research framework to track the movement of people, animals, and artifacts across space and time.
- ItemEnvironmental variability of the last 1600 years derived from a multiproxy lake record of the east Andean margin (46.7°S), central west Patagonia, Chile(2025) Franco, Carolina; Maldonado, Antonio; Ohlendorf, Christian; Gebhardt, A. Catalina; Porras, M. Eugenia de; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Méndez, César; Vogt, Christoph; Zolitschka, BerndCentral west Patagonia is directly exposed to influence of the Southern Westerly Winds (SWW). Its position relative to the core of this major wind system makes this region highly susceptible to magnitude and latitudinal changes of the SWW. Moreover, the pronounced topography defines a strong west-east moisture gradient. We present an environmental reconstruction derived from sediments of Laguna Vogt, a lake located in one of the easternmost valleys of central west Patagonia. Our reconstruction shows that increased runoff triggered the remobilization of basaltic material, while lacustrine production remained low between 1600-1300 and 1000-750 cal yr BP. Between 1300-1000 and 750-250 cal yr BP, these conditions changed to decreased surface runoff, with less clastic input favoring high autochthonous sedimentation, while several episodes of flooding occurred. Our findings indicate that intervals of enhanced runoff at Laguna Vogt correlate with a regional period of increased precipitation, which started to decline around 800 cal yr BP. Climate reconstructions suggest that increased precipitation was a direct result of intensified SWW. Thus, periods of high lacustrine productivity interspersed with episodes of intense flooding are interpreted as shifts between wet-cold and dry-warm conditions occurring on decadal to multidecadal timescales. Around 250 cal yr BP, fluvial detrital input into the lake became dominant, suggesting the establishment of wetter conditions. This increase in precipitation, also documented by other sediment records from central west Patagonia, is associated with intensified SWW. Such a timing compares well with multiple regional glacial advances, indicating an environmental shift likely associated to the last glacial stage of the Holocene.
- ItemLa ocupación de los grupos canoeros y europeo-criollos en tiempos coloniales y republicanos en península de Taitao/golfo de Penas (~46°-48°S), Patagonia occidental, Chile(2025) Reyes, Omar; San Roman, Manuel; Belmar, Carolina; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Méndez, César; Tessone, Augusto; Urbina, XimenaThe results of archaeological surveys carried out in the insular and continental coastal areas south of the Taitao Peninsula and the Gulf of Penas (similar to 46 degrees-48 degrees S) in the Ays & eacute;n region, in western Patagonia are presented. In them, important evidence of material records from colonial and republican times was revealed as a result of activities originated both by canoe groups (marine hunter-gatherer-fishermen) and by Europeans/Creoles, at times when the ways of life of the first were dismantled and transformed, after European contact in the 16th century. This extensive area began to be visited and occupied under new geopolitical, extractivist economic and strategic terms, reconfiguring that space. Through the chronological and material record of 17 archaeological sites, we discuss variables such as the diversity of site represented, subsistence, diet and occupation chronologies in relation to the use of the coastal edge during historical times in this archipelagic space.
- ItemMiddle through late Holocene long-distance transport of exotic shell personal adornments in Central West Patagonia (southern South America). The archaeomalacological assemblage of Bano Nuevo 1(2024) Hammond, Heidi; Zilio, Leandro; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Mendez, CesarThe exchange of information and social interactions on broad spatial scales between human groups in the past can be studied through the provenance of key indicators of distant origin recorded at archaeological sites. The remains of shells of mollusk species, especially when crafted as elements of personal ornaments, express aspects of the behaviors and valuations for the populations that selected, transformed, and exchanged such items. In the southern cone of South America, past hunter-gatherer groups traveled long distances and interacted with communities distributed throughout the territory to acquire goods for technological use, visual display or considered highly valued materials. When recorded at distant locations, these goods of extra local origin are very informative regarding the differences between commonly used home ranges and the occasional access to remote spaces. We present the results of the analysis of the archaeomalacological assemblage of the Bano Nuevo 1 site, a cave with exceptional preservation conditions in Central West Patagonia. This site has yielded a diverse group of artifacts made of shells with origins from multiple distances, as well as evidence of the use of marine, freshwater, and terrestrial species. Its deposits, which extend over the last 11,000 years, reveal an antiquity of at least the middle Holocene for the acquisition, manufacture, use and transport of goods as personal ornaments from shells in the macroregion.
- ItemObsidian Technology and Transport Along the Archipelago of Southernmost South America (42–56° S)(2025) Méndez, César; Morello, Flavia; Reyes, Omar; San Román, Manuel; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Stern, Charles R.Obsidian was a key toolstone for the development of maritime lifeways in the western archipelago of southernmost South America. This area is a fragmented landscape where the major north–south movement of people along the Pacific was only possible by navigation because it is constrained by major biogeographic barriers. Two obsidian sources have been recorded, each one located on the extremes of the archipelago, and each has played a key role in the canoe-adapted societies that used them. As indicated by repeated inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry analyses, obsidian from Chaitén Volcano to the north was distributed between 38°26′ S and 45°20′ S, and obsidian from Seno Otway to the south was distributed between 50° and 55° S, although it mainly occurred in sites close to the Strait of Magellan and within constrained time periods. This study explores the distribution of these two types of obsidians, their chronology, their frequencies in the archaeological record, the main artifact classes that are represented, and the technological processes in which they were involved. This examination indicates common aspects in the selection of high-quality toolstones for highly mobile maritime groups and discusses the different historical trajectories of two obsidians that appear decoupled across the Holocene
- ItemPostglacial landscape dynamics and fire regimes in west Central Patagonia, Chile (44°S, 72°W): Evidence from the Cisnes River Basin(2024) Alvarez-Barra, Valentina; Maldonado, Antonio; de Porras, Maria Eugenia; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Mendez, CesarWe examine the long-term changes in vegetation structure and wildfires regimes in the Chilean Patagonia (44 degrees S, 72 degrees W) at the westernmost part of the Cisnes River basin. Previous studies within this basin have accounted for millennial shifts in glacier, vegetation and fire dynamics but at its easternmost portion. Here, we present a pollen a macro-charcoal particles record from Laguna Las Mellizas del R & iacute;o Cisnes (LLMRC; 44 degrees 38'48.13"S; 72 degrees 19'42.58"W; 209 m a.s.l.) that encompasses the last 13,900 cal yr BP. After glacier retreat, the LLMRC record shows incipient plant colonization upon the retreat of the ice caps (13,900-12,400 cal yr BP), inferred by the low PAR values (< 500 grains cm (-2) yr (-1)) and negligible fire activity. The end of the Lateglacial period is characterized by increased values of N. dombeyi-type and the mistletoe Misodendrum, with the coeval presence of Podocarpus nubigenus and Pilgerodendron uviferum suggesting humid and warm conditions since 12,400 cal yr BP. A peak in Weinmannia trichosperma percentages (similar to 56%) marks the Holocene onset in the LLMRC record indicating a shift towards warmer conditions and enhanced rainfall seasonality, coupled with enhanced fire activity between 11,700 and 9000 cal yr BP. Increased moisture conditions after 9000 cal yr BP trigger the development of a closed Nothofagus-Podocarpus forest while the establishment of the North Patagonian rainforest occured during the middle Holocene (similar to 8000 cal yr BP). The LLMRC record indicate a shift towards an open forest and moderate fire activity during the late Holocene. Despite the documented presence of indigenous population in the region, the results suggest no influence of human activity as potential triggers for fires in this record for the last 4000 years. Overall, the results of LLMRC record suggest the paramount importance of the Southern Westerlies in modulating the observed shifts in vegetation structure and wildfires at the westernmost portion of the Cisnes River basin.
- ItemReiterative rock art production in Central Western Patagonia: the case of Cueva de las Manos del Río Pedregoso (Aisén, Chile)(2025) Moya Cañoles, Francisca Andrea; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Méndez, CésarWe present the analysis results of rock paintings and their relative production sequence at the Cueva de las Manos del río Pedregoso site, a cave in central western Patagonia, southern Chile. We developed a typology of the motifs and propose a relative chronology using Harris’s matrices to identify superimpositions. The results suggest several painting episodes evidencing reiterative rock art production, likely covering several millennia. Also, conspicuous attributes of the paintings suggest connections between the site and other distant locations based on analogue emblematic rock art sequences from different timeframes across wider Patagonia.
- ItemThe occupation of canoe and european creole groups in colonial and republican times in the Taitao Peninsula/Gulf of Penas (∼46°-48°S), Western Patagonia, Chile(2025) Reyes, Omar; San Roman, Manuel; Belmar, Carolina; Nuevo-Delaunay, Amalia; Mendez, Cesar; Tessone, Augusto; Urbina, XimenaThe results of archaeological surveys carried out in the insular and continental coastal areas south of the Taitao Peninsula and the Gulf of Penas (similar to 46 degrees-48 degrees S) in the Ays & eacute;n region, in western Patagonia are presented. In them, important evidence of material records from colonial and republican times was revealed as a result of activities originated both by canoe groups (marine hunter-gatherer-fishermen) and by Europeans/Creoles, at times when the ways of life of the first were dismantled and transformed, after European contact in the 16th century. This extensive area began to be visited and occupied under new geopolitical, extractivist economic and strategic terms, reconfiguring that space. Through the chronological and material record of 17 archaeological sites, we discuss variables such as the diversity of site represented, subsistence, diet and occupation chronologies in relation to the use of the coastal edge during historical times in this archipelagic space.