Content area
Full text
KEYWORDS: Late Holocene - Mobility - Social networks - Petroglyph
Abstract. This work presents original information from the recording of petroglyphs in Paredón de los Grabados, located in the middle course of the Salado stream, Río Negro Province, Argentina. The Salado basin connects the foothills of the Somuncura Plateau with the west coast of the San Matías Gulf. Due to its intermediate geographic location, the site becomes a relevant point for the study of mobility and social interaction between the Atlantic coast and the Patagonian interior. Different lines of evidence suggest the recurrent use of the place during the late Holocene, including historical times. Comparative analysis indicates that these petroglyphs share more similarities with interior rock art than with coastal rock art. Social and chronological implications of such patterns of connectivity are discussed.
Introduction
In this paper, we approach the issue of the human circulation paths and interaction networks among hunter-gatherer societies from northeast Patagonia through a comparative study of rock art. This goal is part of a major archaeological project that explores the mobility and settlement systems of the hunter-fishergatherer populations who inhabited the region since the Middle Holocene to post-contact times (Borella et al. 2019a). Our starting point is the study of a new site with petroglyphs, located in a subsidiary creek of the Salado stream in its middle course, and named Paredón de los Grabados (hereafter PG). This locus is 48 km west of the Atlantic Ocean and 30 km north of Sierra Grande city, in Río Negro province (Fig. 1). The Salado stream connects the foothills of the Somuncura Plateau with the Atlantic coast in a semiarid landscape where water is a critical resource. Due to its relatively central position in respect to other sites with rock art from the region, PG becomes a crucial point for evaluating mobility vectors and social interaction networks between the Patagonian coast and its interior (Fig. 1). Therefore, the objective is to characterise its petroglyphs in order to compare them to the rock art information from other sites of southeast Río Negro.
Our study of rock art is based on the concept of style, which we understand as part of the variability of material culture that participates in nonverbal communication processes. In this fashion,...