The Pampas and Patagonia are the geographical representations of the nomadic forager societies in the Southern Cone of South America. These people lived almost exclusively by hunting, gathering and fishing, from their primary dispersal during the late Pleistocene until the European conquest. The book The archaeology of the Pampas and Patagonia is a critical and comprehensive review of the knowledge produced by archaeological scholarship and, secondarily, from related disciplines (palaeoecology, palaeoclimatology, genetics and ethnohistory) on Pampean and Patagonian foragers—and the authors, Gustavo Politis and Luis Borrero, have been the most influential researchers in this field during the past decades. The book consists of seven chapters, which are organised into three parts. The first contains an Introduction, contextual information on the historical background and resources. The second part offers the main content of the work in chronological order: ‘The early peopling’, ‘The Middle Holocene’ and ‘The Late Holocene diversification’. ‘Final remarks’ is the third part with an overview of the principal hypothesis and interpretations of the authors. Although the content of the chapters alternates between Pampa and Patagonia, all is well integrated and does not disrupt fluid reading.
In the first part the authors summarise the environmental and, to a lesser extent, the palaeoenvironmental information of the entire area. They define and characterise 21 geographic/archaeological units, 12 relate to Pampa and nine to Patagonia. This subdivision, based on geographic and ecological criteria, is a necessary reference frame to capture the heterogeneity and complexity of both regions. Chapter 2 delivers a historical overview of the nearly 140 years of archaeological research in the Pampas and Patagonia. Anyone interested in understanding how the archaeological knowledge was built up in these regions needs to read these 40 pages.
The book's second part begins with the early peopling of the regions during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene (c. 14–8 ka calBP). This is one of the most relevant topics for potential readers since the primary dispersal of humans across the whole continent has always been and still is under debate. I would like to highlight the analytical sobriety and the critical evaluation of the data conveyed in this chapter. In recent years, we have witnessed an increase of supposed human evidence in South America of more than 15 000 years ago (Pilauco, Monte Verde I, Chinchihuapi and several sites in the Piauí region in Brazil). Although the reliability of all these sites has been questioned, the extraordinary diffusion of these findings in the media has reinforced the wrong idea that there is solid evidence for a pre-late Glacial Maximum peopling. In Chapter 4, Politis and Borrero clearly show that there is no support for this hypothesis in the Pampas and Patagonia, probably the best-known region for the late Pleistocene archaeology in South America. In addition, the authors observe that human evidence is relatively late in north-western Patagonia (not older than 12 000 calBP). Considering that this is an intensely studied region, it will be necessary to address why, after almost 40 years, the famous and nearby site of Monte Verde II (dated at least 14 500 years BP) still behaves as an outlier, not only in chronological, but also in cultural terms. The semi-sedentary lifestyle proposed for this site has no parallels for this period in South America.
Although at first glance humans appear to have gone through the middle Holocene (c. 8–5 ka calBP) without any extraordinary changes, there were some important events in this period, which Politis and Borrero identify and discuss: 1) the beginning of widespread exploitation of marine resources, including a process of complete maritime adaptation in the Beagle Channel and archipelagos of the Southern Pacific Ocean; 2) the emergence and experimentation on new technologies, especially in Patagonia, such as the blade technology, the weapon system of ‘bolas’ (a throwing weapon made of string with weights at the ends whose function is to bring down prey by entangling it around the limbs), and several tools related to maritime resources exploitation; and 3) the limited archaeological evidence for most of the middle Holocene. In this regard, the book addresses several ongoing debates around the causes (demographics, taphonomics, and/or cultural) of the decline in the amount of archaeological material from the middle Holocene.
Based on the careful analysis of an impressive volume of archaeological data, generated specially during the past three decades, the authors summarise in chapter 6 all the important changes that occurred during the late Holocene (c. 5000 to 500 calBP), including: the significant population increase after 2000 years ago, the emergence of substantial innovations (e.g. the bow-and-arrow system and pottery), and the dispersion of horticultural practices over the north-eastern Pampas. Beyond all that, I especially value this chapter's approach to treating inter-regional human interactions. This is not only a cross-cutting topic, it also reflects partially different ways of dealing with and researching the issue across regions. In the Pampas a more explicit evaluation of the existence of ethnic borders through cultural markers has been undertaken and, in some cases, ethnohistorical data have been used as a frame of reference. Although assessing ethnicity in archaeology is a challenging issue, the effort to include it in the debate is more than welcome. In Patagonia, ethnicity has been a marginal topic in research circles, while regional interactions were more deeply discussed in terms of mobility and territoriality and through the use of archaeometric proxies (e.g. stable isotopes studies and geochemical analysis of obsidian). Regardless of their different traditions and approaches, the archaeology of the Pampas and Patagonia for the late Holocene shows an increasing capacity for dealing with social-dependant topics that were poorly treated only a couple of decades ago.
The book reviewed here is the most complete synthesis of the history of hunter-gatherer societies from the Southern Cone of South America; it is essential reading for scholars and students interested in what happened there between 14 000 years ago and the nineteenth century.
