A PALEOECOLOGICAL APPROACH TO THE ARCHAEOLOGY OF SOUTHERN MENDOZA

The present work supports the idea that the archaeological record constitutes a valid approach to understand the relationship between humans and environment. It not only constitutes a paleoecological record because of the recovery of biological evidences associated to human occupations but due to the fact that humans themselves are significant components of past ecosystems. In other words, the understanding of human occupations implies the comprehension of making decisions within a particular environmental context[1,2]. If we accept humans as components of the ecosystem, there are several available theoretical and methodological backgrounds that allow the understanding of past systems, which range from ecological evolutionary approaches to landscape archaeology. Human paleoecology allows to explore and comprehend the variability of the archaeological record in terms of human strategies as well as to offer perspectives for the understanding of past processes. These approaches have also been denominated environmental archaeology[2]. Although paleoecological studies have been originally based on non-human biological indicators, modern research programmes are starting to incorporate the human component within this system. Archaeological emphasis has varied from studies accentuating on systemi