Current Research in Archaeology of South American Pampas (eBook)

This volume includes a selection of papers derived from the IX Conference of the Pampas region of Argentina, held virtually in 2021 in Mar del Plata (Buenos Aires, Argentina) and organized by the National University of Mar del Plata. Located in the southern cone of South America, the Pampas are vast plain grasslands that range across central Argentina and are one of the largest prairies of the world. The early traces of humans date back to ca. 12,200 14C years BP. From the Late Pleistocene up to the Spanish Conquest in the sixteenth century, hunter-gatherer groups occupied the Pampas. Archaeological research in the region has been focused on fascinating topics such as the early peopling, the mobility circuits in the past, the interaction between indigenous and colonial societies, and the perception of this complex past by the modern Pampean society, mainly integrated by European immigrants and indigenous descendants. This book gathers these themes and includes a selection of a conference of one of the keynote speakers and 18 papers that represent diverse topics on the current Pampean research. The book is structured in two main axes: 1) prehispanic studies using different lines of evidence; 2) historical archaeology and cultural heritage.

Gustavo Federico Bonnat is an Assistant Researcher at the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET); and a member of the Laboratorio de Arqueologia Regional Bonaerense and the Institute of Humanities and Social Sciences (INHUS). He is also an associate professor in the history departament at the Facultad de Humanidades, Universidad Nacional de Mar del Plata, Argentina. Throughout of his career, he has focused on studying the lithic technology of early hunter-gatherer groups in the Pampas region (ca. 10,000 years BP) and obtained his PhD from the Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires. Additionally, he has experience in studying lithic technology during the Aurignacian period in northwest Italy and conducting pXRF analysis on obsidian archaeological lithic assemblages from Papua New Guinea.