Early to Middle Holocene Climatic Change and the Use of Animal Resources by Highland Hunter-Gatherers of the South-Central Andes

Abstract

A paradox regarding the relationship between environmental change and the use of animal resources by hunter-gatherers has become common place in archaeological and anthropological literature. On the one hand, environmental carrying capacity and its evolution through time has emerged as a key feature in most theoretical models of behavioral ecology and other ecological perspectives in hunter-gatherers studies. On the other hand, the relationship between environmental changes and the actual impact on animals and other resources important for human subsistence remain almost unexplored in empirical terms, with a few exceptions (Grayson 2000; Broughton et al. 2008; Wolverton 2008). With this in mind, the goal of this paper is to study the relationship between the use of animal resources by hunter-gatherers and the environmental modification that occurred with the onset of Middle Holocene aridity in the southern Altiplano of the Andes.