Fishing intensification as response to Late Holocene socio-ecological instability in southeastern South America.

ABSTRACT: The emergence of plant-based economies have dominated evolutionary models of Middle and Late Holocene pre-Columbian societies in South America. Comparatively, the use of aquatic resources and the circumstances for intensifying their exploitation have received little attention. Here we reviewed the stable carbon and nitrogen isotope composition of 390 human individuals from Middle and Late Holocene coastal sambaquis, a long-lasting shell mound culture that flourished for nearly 7000 years along the Atlantic Forest coast of Brazil. Using a newly generated faunal isotopic baseline and Bayesian Isotope Mixing Models we quantified the relative contribution of marine resources to the diet of some of these groups. Through the analysis of more than 400 radiocarbon dates we show that fishing sustai

SUBMITTER: Toso A 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8648744 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature