Unveiling the spatial structure of rock painting designs and information flow among hunter-gatherers in southern Patagonia

Abstract

Recent rock art research in the Pali Aike volcanic field (PAVF, southern Argentina and Chile) expanded the chronology (ca. 3100B.P.) and morphological and technical repertoire of abstract-geometric and figurative paintings of the “Río Chico style”. This paper discusses the spatial distribution of painted motifs to understand the criteria that guided the representation strategies and the flow of information among the hunter-gatherers that occupied the PAVF during the late Holocene. By employing social network analysis and statistical tests, two main groups of rock art locations that differ in geographic position, plus the richness and abundance of motifs, were detected. Furthermore, geographical distance was observed to have played a key role in determining the spatial structuring of motif class distribution at the regional level, with significant similarities existing between nearby locations (ca. 20 km) and important differences between more distant ones (ca. 60 km). Thus, rock art paintings as cultural features related to an ancient flow of information and human mobility patterns at a large spatial scale, follow the spatial trend described by other lines of archaeological evidence, which indicates different forms of human land use and occupational intensity between sectors of the PAVF, particularly between the Gallegos (northern sector) and Chico (southern sector) Rivers.