Dietary resilience among hunter-gatherers of Tierra del Fuego: Isotopic evidence in a diachronic perspective - PubMed (original) (raw)

Dietary resilience among hunter-gatherers of Tierra del Fuego: Isotopic evidence in a diachronic perspective

Mary Anne Tafuri et al. PLoS One. 2017.

Abstract

The native groups of Patagonia have relied on a hunter-gatherer economy well after the first Europeans and North Americans reached this part of the world. The large exploitation of marine mammals (i.e., seals) by such allochthonous groups has had a strong impact on the local ecology in a way that might have forced the natives to adjust their subsistence strategies. Similarly, the introduction of new foods might have changed local diet. These are the premises of our isotopic-based analysis. There is a large set of paleonutritional investigations through isotopic analysis on Fuegians groups, however a systematic exploration of food practices across time in relation to possible pre- and post-contact changes is still lacking. In this paper we investigate dietary variation in hunter-gatherer groups of Tierra del Fuego in a diachronic perspective, through measuring the isotopic ratio of carbon (∂13C) and nitrogen (∂15N) in the bone collagen of human and a selection of terrestrial and marine animal samples. The data obtained reveal an unexpected isotopic uniformity across prehistoric and recent groups, with little variation in both carbon and nitrogen mean values, which we interpret as the possible evidence of resilience among these groups and persistence of subsistence strategies, allowing inferences on the dramatic contraction (and extinction) of Fuegian populations.

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Conflict of interest statement

Competing Interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.

Figures

Fig 1

Fig 1. Map of the study area with location of the sites.

Key: 1: Bove’s collection; 2: Aeroclub; 3: Shamakush-Mischiuen 3; 4: Paiashauaia 1; 5: Acatushun—Harberton Cementario; 6: Imiwaia.

Fig 2

Fig 2. Distribution of the human data.

Frequency of stable carbon and nitrogen isotope values.

Fig 3

Fig 3. Stable carbon and nitrogen isotopes biplot.

∂13C and ∂15N (‰) of human samples with associated animal mean values and standard deviation. The three human subsets are kept separate.

Fig 4

Fig 4. Pre- and post-contact data distribution.

Box and whisker plot of nitrogen and carbon values for pre- and post-contact human populations. Nitrogen median values show little differences between pre-contact and post-contact phases.

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Grants and funding

Part of this research was funded by the Marie Curie Action granted to MAT. The funders had no role in the study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript. There was no additional external funding received for this study.

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