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ORIGINAL RESEARCH article
Front. Environ. Archaeol.
Sec. Zooarchaeology
Volume 4 - 2025 | doi: 10.3389/fearc.2025.1552292
This article is part of the Research Topic New Theoretical and Methodological Approaches to Land Use Dynamics in the Andes during the Late Holocene View all 8 articles
Management of South American Camelids in the Eastern Andes of Northwestern Argentina: A Comparative Study of Archaeological Cases In the Last Two Millennia
Provisionally accepted
Enrique Alejandro Moreno 1,2*
Celeste Samec 3
Luis Manuel del Papa 4 Constanza Taboada 5 Pablo Mercolli 6
Rodrigo Nores 7 Stefanie Schirmer 8 Noel Amano 9*- 1 Instituto Regional de Estudios Socio-Culturales (IRES) CONICET - Universidad Nacional de Catamarca, Catamarca, Argentina
- 2 Escuela de Arqueología, Universidad Nacional de Catamarca., San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca, Argentina
- 3 Instituto de Geocronología y Geología Isotópica - INGEIS (CONICET-Universidad de Buenos Aires), Buenos Aires, Argentina
- 4 División Antropología, Museo de La Plata, Facultad de Ciencias Naturales y Museo (UNLP-CONICET), La Plata, Argentina
- 5 Instituto Superior de Estudios Sociales (CONICET-UNT), Facultad de Ciencias Naturales e Instituto Miguel Lillo (UNT), San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina
- 6 Instituto Interdisciplinario de Tilcara, Facultad de Filosofía y Letras, UBA, Tilcara, Jujuy, Argentina
- 7 Instituto de Antropología de Córdoba (CONICET-UNC), Departamento de Antropología, Facultad de Filosofía y Humanidades, UNC,, Córdoba, Argentina
- 8 Department of Coevolution of Land Use and Urbanisation, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology, Jena, Germany
- 9 Department of Coevolution of Land Use and Urbanisation, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. isoTROPIC Research Group, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology., Jena, Germany
Human-camelid interactions were an essential component in the everyday life of the societies that inhabited the South and Central Andes. While numerous studies have focused on this topic, they have primarily focused on the Puna plateaus, where camelids remain a key resource today. In contrast, the eastern Andean regions of Northwestern Argentina have been historically viewed as marginal and the presence of camelids in zooarchaeological assemblages has been often attributed to hunting or specialized pastoralist production for political and administrative centers located in the western valleys. Recent research in this area challenges and reshapes this view. This paper reassesses the presumed marginality of these regions by critically looking at zooarchaeological information including taxonomic, osteometric, age profiles and skeletal parts representation analyses from several key sites. We propose a preliminary model of camelid management in these environments, contributing to broader discussions of similar practices in non-high-Andean regions of South America.
Keywords: South American camelids, Eastern Andes, Herding, zooarchaeology, Northwestern Argentina
Received: 27 Dec 2024; Accepted: 20 Mar 2025.
Copyright: © 2025 Moreno, Samec, del Papa, Taboada, Mercolli, Nores, Schirmer and Amano. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) or licensor are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
* Correspondence:
Enrique Alejandro Moreno, Instituto Regional de Estudios Socio-Culturales (IRES) CONICET - Universidad Nacional de Catamarca, Catamarca, Argentina
Noel Amano, Department of Coevolution of Land Use and Urbanisation, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology. isoTROPIC Research Group, Max Planck Institute of Geoanthropology., Jena, Germany
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