CONCLUSION

Since most of the sites used to understand the early peopling are caves, it is clear that there is a functional bias operating in our understanding of the earlier human occupations. However, if we review the chronological record of the different places of Patagonia, the panorama is clear. A couple of sites in the forests of the north—west of the Andes—indicate human presence between ca. 12,500 and 10,200 BP, while several sites date to the early Holocene in the steppes of the east of North Patagonia. Pleistocene megamammals were not important in this part of Patagonia. The record for the middle and late Holocene is not complete, but indicates the dispersal along the river basins and the north Atlantic coast.

Many sites in the plateaus south of the Deseado River display slight evidence of use before the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, with dates of ca. 11,000 BP for the oldest evidence of human installation. Remains of Pleistocene mammals are present in the earliest levels of some of these sites, but never in large numbers. More intense and repetitive occupations, basically centered in the exploitation of guanacos, follow during the early Holocene when the climate was warmer.

Farther south, radiocarbon dates falling around 11,000-10,500 BP are available, including what is today Tierra del Fuego. The presence of Pleistocene megamammals— mainly horse and ground sloth—is more regular in this southern part of Patagonia, but always associated with intensive utilization of guanaco.

In all of these cases the stratigraphic evidence is well dated by abundant radiocarbon dates, and includes a variety of lithic instruments, artifacts, the occasional bone artifact, basin-shaped hearths, and butchered faunal remains. Thus, the archaeological evidence for the presence of humans near the end of the Pleistocene in southern Patagonia is clear and relatively abundant. It indicates that some 2,000 years before the Transition there were human populations wandering in different parts of the region, and that by around 10,000 BP most of Patagonia was already explored by humans.

The Holocene cultural trajectories of these early populations were manifold, including the appearance of a maritime way of life in the southwestern channels of the Pacific Ocean, the specialization in the exploitation of guanacos in the plateaus and interior basins, and the complementary use of marine resources along the coast of the Atlantic Ocean.