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For thousands of years, hunter-gatherer societies from southern and central Patagonia inhabited a Subantarctic landscape. In this paper, we argue against the traditional assumption that these were simple societies. We examine population diversity from ecological, archaeological, and ethno-historical data sources, emphasizing the economic and social variability while considering social change through time. We end by analyzing processes of the development of social complexity and hierarchy in recent times, when the industrial world violently disarticulated those societies. All this evidence suggests levels of social variability and complexity archaeologists have not expected. The paper critically reviews traditional archaeological approaches and suggests new research lines that allow for a better understanding of social dynamics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article investigates different forms of registry of the Mapuche concept in both Chile and Argentina after indigenous territories of Araucania and Patagonia were conquered, by late XIX century. A hypothesis is suggested concerning a difference in this registry, based on what was -within these contexts- the destination of Mapuche bodies on the one hand and of papers and documents created and accumulated by these populations before being included into both Sates sovereignties, on the other. We can see that in Argentina, bodies museographical inscription was privileged and, at the same time there was a document archives inscription which made Mapuche an historiographical and anthropological past element and lacking political validity at present. While in Chile, there is a population inscription of Mapuche bodies related to a kind of mestizo and state ideology through which the Mapuche concept got a kind of racial validity. This is how the idea of "reducto" arose as a category through which ambivalences from both types of inscription are analyzed so that the Mapuche concept has worked as a patrimonial capital of national sovereignty (associated to identity and autochthonousness) or, on the contrary as just the rest of a life or indigenous culture that persists and is managed in the political and historical limits of this same national sovereignty. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes a simulation model combining the main components of water balance and growth of perennial grassland steppe in Chilean Patagonia, to estimate long-term annual production (Yr, kg ha-1) and sheep carrying capacity (GC, sheep equivalent [EO] ha-1). The model is based on climate-water balance relationships, where the basic process is evapotranspiration. The model calculates Yr depending on the accumulation of transpiration and the water use efficiency from the time of growth initiation until the grassland accumulates the maximum amount of dry matter (DM). Depending on Yr, the DM requirement of EO, the proper use factor of grassland and a slope correction factor, a range site GC is calculated. Simulations were performed using actual climate data sets of eight growing seasons at Kampenaike (52°41' S; 70°54' W; 12 m.a.s.l.) and a long-term simulation in the same location, using a stochastic weather variables generator. Through the model it was possible to estimate the water loss associated with the components of water balance and estimate the restriction imposed by water deficit on Yr. By simulating many years, it was possible to establish a normal distribution of GC with 0.629 EO ha-1 yr-1, associated with 80% probability of being exceeded, which is lower than values reported in field assessments. This method calculates GC with a conservational approach, taking into account soil and climatic variability in semiarid ecosystems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego include contrasting environments and populations. Both were settled more than 10,000 years ago, although the coastal resources were not intensively exploited until four millennia later. The littoral resource exploitation had very different characteristics on the Atlantic compared to the Magellan-Fuegian coasts. Generalized strategies were maintained in the former, while in the latter the inhabitants developed a specialization—they became intensively dependent on the littoral and marine resources and designed special technological means for their procurement and processing, including navigation capability. This process began some 6,400 radiocarbon years ago and these sea-nomads colonized the southern- most archipelago from the Beagle Channel down to Cape Horn. After synthesizing the settling of Patagonia, this paper focuses on the process of colonization and cultural endurance of the seanomads until the time of European contact. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lowering of global sea level during the Pleistocene by more than 100 m and subsequent inundation of coastal areas constitutes a problem in terms of general research on early maritime-oriented societies. However, post-glacial isostatic rise in glaciated regions has produced raised shorelines of Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene age, e.g., in Scandinavia, Patagonia, and North America. As these regions contain the oldest preserved coastal areas, they are imperative for the understanding of the development of maritime hunter-gatherers. The extensive Norwegian coastline appears to have been colonized in the course of the few hundred years around 9500 cal B.C. An overwhelming majority of Early Holocene sites are found in the fiord/skerry coastal landscape, indicating that marine resources were vital in the subsistence pattern of people occupying the region. The lithic tradition is clearly linked to specialized megafauna hunters in the continental plains (the Ahrensburgian complex of northwestern Europe), but the facts about and dynamics of the development of the marine subsistence pattern are unclear. This paper focuses on this problem-with comparative perspectives towards the emergence of maritime foragers in Patagonia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, transformations of internal links within the indigenous political field are explored, focusing on the last decades of the frontier. This period, in which the state progresses towards its political unification and institutional consolidation, state policies regarding Indian people show a more unified profile and aim to create the conditions necessary for the frontiers advance. The peace treaties policy, extended to almost the whole indigenous map, will be one of the devices through the state will attempt to canalize and to order its relations with different chiefs and groups. Our interest attempts to identify the probable conditionings and influences of this policy on the indigenous population at the conformation, strengthening and weakening of their political alliances. We intend specifically to reconstruct-within this context-the process of the Calfucurá's leadership, to identify the impact of state interventions over the extent of his political summoning capacity during this period. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The south of Patagonia is characterized by its semi-arid weather and numerous small, temporary and permanent shallow ponds. The aquatic crustaceans of these water bodies are characterized by their endemism and species richness. The present study was done in the surroundings of Punta Arenas (53°S, Chile), and included six shallow ponds. Samples for conductivity, total dissolved solids, chlorophyll, and crustacean zooplankton as well as littoral species of crustacea were collected. Our study revealed that Branchinecta gaini Daday, 1910 occurred at low conductivity (0.55 mS/cm), and low total dissolved solids (0.28 g/l) and chlorophyll (2.70 μg/l) concentrations, such compared to sites without fairy shrimp populations, that had significantly high conductivity (3.58 mS/cm), and high total dissolved solids (1.80 mg/l) and chlorophyll (12.80 μg/l) concentrations. The results partially agree with the first descriptions of Patagonian water bodies that indicated the presence of fairy shrimps in low conductivity waters. The observations of the presence of B. gaini and other associated microcrustaceans are similar to descriptions of unpolluted water bodies in Antarctica, and those results would support the observations of the present paper. Other reports on fairy shrimp habitats mentioned a wide range of both salinity and trophic status. Other ecological and biogeographical topics on fairy shrimps are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]