Humanized nature: Symbolic representation of fauna in pottery from the Paraná River of South America

Abstract

In this chapter, the economic and symbolic relations between animals and pre-Hispanic indigenous people from the Middle and Lower Paraná River of Argentina, South America are discussed. This issue is approached throughout the analyses of pottery zoomorphic appendages, which represent birds, mammals, reptiles and mollusks, and are assigned to the Goya-Malabrigo archaeological entity (~2000 14C yrs BP to XVIIth century). These appendages have realistic morphological details that allowed taxonomic identification at class, order, family, genus or species level. These pottery representations of the animals are contrasted with the faunal remains from the Goya-Malabrigo archaeological sites. The combination of these different information sources shows that the preys that were regularly eaten were not depicted in the appendages, and that the nutritional role of animals was not favored in these representations. The present study allows a discussion about the human-animal interrelation, which in turn contributes to global theoretical approaches, related to the humanization of nature.