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Copyright of Revista del Museo de Antropología is the property of Museo de Antropologia - IDACOR and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Copyright of Intersecciones en Antropología is the property of Universidad Nacional del Centro de la Provincia de Buenos Aires, Facultad de Ciencias Sociales and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the implications of the conformation of formal burial areas in the southernmost limit of agricultural dispersion in South America. Previous research proposed the development of cemeteries or formal burial areas due to specialization in using specific habitats and the development of territorial ownership. From a paleoecological background, we hypothesize that hunter‐gatherers intensified resource exploitation and develop territoriality in population growth and pressure over resources. The expectation is that formal burial areas emerged in this context to legitimize the ties with the territory and ensure exclusive access to the land and its resources. To evaluate this hypothesis, we analyzed a mortuary context from southern Mendoza (Central Western Argentina), named Ojo de Agua, by describing the site's characteristics, burial modality, presence of grave goods, age at death profile, and evidence of violence. This site has two main conditions for handling our hypothesis: (1) the chronology and spatial localization coincide with the temporal and geographic dispersion of pre‐Hispanic cultigens; (2) systematic procedures during fieldwork led us to access a significant amount of information not available in other mortuary contexts of the area. Our results point to Ojo de Agua as a cemetery that emerged in the frame of increasing territoriality and conflict with neighboring groups and permitted us to improve our knowledge about the dynamic relationship between human population, environment, and cultural responses in the context of intensification and contact with food production. These results deepen recent studies in the same line but with a greater resolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]