Using ceramic petrography to assess human mobility during the Late Prehispanic Period from Sierras of Córdoba (Argentina)

Abstract

How human foragers adjusted their mobility strategies to the labor demand of plant cultivation is a question that drives much modern archaeological research. As a result, the spread of food-producing economies during the Late Prehispanic Period from Sierras of Córdoba (Argentina, ca. 1500–360 BP) has been recently defined as a dynamic sociocultural process where a mixed foraging and cultivation economy was accompanied by a flexible and seasonal landscape-use organization. However, the seasonal-sedentary model requires the elaboration of details that have not been specified. In order to enhance the knowledge of local and regional mobility, pottery fragments obtained on five open-air sites from Pampa of Olaen, northern Punilla and eastern Salsacate valleys interpreted as seasonally reoccupied encampments were studied. A first petrographic analysis of ceramic pastes was performed to explore how pottery production, distribution and consumption were organized within late prehispanic groups. It was concluded the pots were likely fashioned using raw materials obtained close to sites and carried during the annual cycle of mobility, improving the understanding of residential mobility in archaeological groups where the adoption of crop plants did not necessary lead to fully-sedentary farming.