Simón Urbina, Leonor Adán, Margarita Alvarado, Luis Cornejo, Ximena Urbina, Ricardo Álvarez y Aldo Farías

The historical archeology of the city of Osorno and its hinterland in Southern Chile constitute the core of this research. By analyzing urban architecture, site distribution, and ceramic collections, we evaluate the hypotheses surrounding Hispanic settlements between 1558 and 1796 and occupational processes that occurred from the Early Ceramic (4th-11th centuries) to Late Ceramic and Colonial periods (12th-19th centuries). The discussion about long-term history (including archaeological periods) and intercultural relations, based on documentary sources, settlement patterns, and ceramic typology, allows us to integrate the jurisdiction of Osorno into wider archaeological and historiographic debates. In this paper, we deal with discontinuities in colonial processes on the southern border of the Kingdom of Chile and artifactual hybridization that gave rise to urban settlements in densely inhabited indigenous territories.

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Viviana Andrea Yepes López, Jhonatan Martínez Murcia, Fiorella Villanueva y Juliana Gómez Mejía

A variety of microfossils such as pollen, starches, phytoliths and cyanobacteria originated from plant foods are trapped in the matrix of dental calculus. Among them, the group of phytoliths stands out, which are microscopic bodies of precipitated silica inside the cells or in the interstitial spaces along the structure of plants, generating mineralized particles of diverse sizes and shapes. Their morphological identification allows them to be classified taxonomically at the generic level and, sometimes, at the specific level, allowing the reconstruction of the diet of individuals and populations. In this work, we present the analysis of the phytoliths recovered, through a physicochemical process from the dental calculus belonging to 22 prehispanic individuals who occupied two sites (Palestina and El Edén) during the Early (

Paula Novellino, Gabriela Da Peña, Daniela Guevara y Jorge Suby

Since a few years ago, several studies have been carried out to analyze the impact of economic changes produced in the center-north of Mendoza during the late Holocene on the development of skeletal pathologies and stress patterns. This study presents the results of an analysis of spinal osteoarthrosis (OA) on 26 individuals belonging to six archaeological sites, considering the chronological (before and after 1000 BP) and geomorphological (Mountain and Plain) divisions proposed in previous investigations. A trend towards a greater development of OA, particularly in the dorsal and lumbar segments, was observed within groups associated with economies primarily based on hunting and gathering. By contrast, individuals belonging to later periods, associated with a greater intake of domesticated resources, and including Inka rule and contact with Spanish conquistadores, show lower incidence rates and severity. Our results add to the existing knowledge about OA in the different groups that inhabited the region during the late Holocene.

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María Lorena Cohen y María Soledad Martinez

The purpose of this article is to present material in order to discuss the interpretation of a particular set of disordered, tied up objects, typical of Republican times, known in the Andean world as q’epi. Furthermore, the selection of the elements that make up the q’epi and their social meanings will be addressed, as well as the consequences that laying these elements in a pre-Hispanic cist had on the territory. The finding context is part of an architectural ensemble located at the top of a rock, corresponding to the Peñas Coloradas 3 cumbre (PC3c) site in the town of Antofagasta de la Sierra in the Argentine Southern Puna. We consider that the burial of the q’epi in a pre-Hispanic cist stands as a significant practice, which is typical of the configuration of an ancestral territory, where the reproduction of ritual practices of pre-Hispanic roots endure with changes in new socio-political frameworks.

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