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In this paper we focus on the regional/local scale of the archaeological record of the Central-West area of Chubut (Argentinean Patagonia) through the characterization of its regional taphonomy, considered from an archaeological perspective. We focus our research in the comparison of three different landscape situations: 1) a slope leading to highlands, 2) an azonal vegetal community (wetland or mallín ), and 3) a salt lake. Our main goal is to compare those situations, in order to determine the main taphonomic factors that regulate the archaeological material distribution in those locales. The ultimate goal is to address how past hunter–gatherers inhabited these landscapes. We depart from the assumption that distributions of artifacts are mainly explained by the action of post-depositional processes. To evaluate this assumption first we postulate a series of hypothesis and expectations for each locale, considering the main post-depositional agents present in them, and we evaluated if the patterns of material distributions can be explained by one or many of those processes. Only if explanation cannot be achieved by them, we recurred to human depositional activities. As a result we managed to explain most of the archaeological distributions in terms of post-depositional processes. Only in two cases we propose that human deposition occurred. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper summarizes and discusses the main results achieved over three decades of research on paleodemographic aspects of Late Holocene hunter-gatherers in Northwestern Santa Cruz (Argentina). Research has been guided by a model of regional settlement that proposes that, as a result of the progressive aridization process recorded in Patagonia during the Late Holocene, human groups would have reduced their residential mobility and concentrated their settlements in low altitude basins with water availability, such as Lake Cardiel and Lake Salitroso. Paleodemographic questions derived from the model relate to population regional continuity and dynamics and were tested using several lines of research at regional and local scales. The assessment of the chronological information and temporal trends of the archaeological record at the regional level allowed for a coarse grain paleodemographic approach, and acted as a mean to support hypotheses related to changes in mobility and land use strategies. Building on this, several lines of bioarchaeological evidence were used to address paleodemographic aspects of the model, including temporal, distributional, and compositional studies of the mortuary record, isotopic, morphometric and DNA analyses and the sex and age structure of the skeletal samples recovered in Lake Salitroso basin. Results point to a biological and cultural population continuity in the region during the Late Holocene. Also, a reduction in residential mobility would have favored a slight population growth of Lake Salitroso populations during the last millennium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]