کد مقاله کد نشریه سال انتشار مقاله انگلیسی نسخه تمام متن
1044377 1484285 2008 17 صفحه PDF دانلود رایگان
عنوان انگلیسی مقاله ISI
Taphonomy at two contiguous coastal rockshelters in Panama: Preliminary observations focusing on fishing and curing fish
موضوعات مرتبط
مهندسی و علوم پایه علوم زمین و سیارات زمین شناسی
پیش نمایش صفحه اول مقاله
Taphonomy at two contiguous coastal rockshelters in Panama: Preliminary observations focusing on fishing and curing fish
چکیده انگلیسی

The scarcity of animal products negatively influences nutrition in tropical inland areas, which lack large rivers. Consuming cured marine fish mitigates this deficiency. In Panama, trading cured fish from coastal to inland sites is documented ethnohistorically and can be inferred from the current archaeozoological record. Very large numbers of marine fish remains have been recovered at pre-Columbian sites located on and around Parita Bay, a mangrove-fringed estuary on the central Pacific coast. At Sitio Sierra, a farming village 12 km inland from the active marine shore, more than 70% of fish remains deposited between ca. 1800 and 1500 uncalibrated radiocarbon years BP proved to be of marine origin. Two small rock-shelters located downriver from Sitio Sierra and now 2.6 km from the marine shore (Vampiros-1 and Vampiros-2) show evidence for having been used intensively for fishing and preparing fish between ca. 2200 and 1900 BP. A prior model based on air photograph interpretation and sedimentological analyses of marine and terrigenous sediments suggest that these shelters would have been on or very near the active marine shore at this time. A much earlier occupation at Vampiros-1 dating to ca. 11,500–7700 BP corresponds to pre-agricultural (Paleoindian) and early agricultural (Early Preceramic) people who camped occasionally in this shelter when the transgressing ocean was in the process of flooding Parita Bay. No shell or bone was recovered in this earlier cultural component. In the more recent (2200–1900 BP), component abundant remains of marine mollusks and crustaceans and vertebrate bones (mostly fish) are in excellent condition. A synopsis of the geological and cultural history of the Vampiros shelters is followed by preliminary observations on the relationship between pre-Columbian human activities and these sites’ formation processes, soil chemistry, bone integrity and animal species. Evidence is accruing for human impacts on fish skeletons resulting from the in situ preparation of fish (i.e., gutting, cutting and smoking) providing the opportunity to compare our archaeofaunal data with the results of Irit Zohar's ethno-archeological research, which identified how preparing fish for salting and sun-drying at present-day Panamanian fishing villages around Parita Bay affects the fish skeleton physically and proportionally. There is a strong possibility that the Vampiros shelters were used to provision inland sites like Sitio Sierra with inshore marine fish although we cannot yet ascertain the means by which coastal foodstuffs may have arrived at the latter site.

ناشر
Database: Elsevier - ScienceDirect (ساینس دایرکت)
Journal: Quaternary International - Volume 180, Issue 1, March 2008, Pages 90–106
نویسندگان
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