Roedores del Holoceno tardío de la Puna de Atacama, sitio arqueológico Tebenquiche Chico, Catamarca, Argentina

Abstract

We study a sample of rodents coming from the archaeological site Tebenquiche Chico, situated on the Antofagasta de la Sierra Department, Catamarca Province, near to the Antofalla salt-flat at 520 m elevation. The site is a small settlement inhabited between the IV and XII centuries and repopulated in the XVII century. The remains were recovered from the buildings of the archaeological site, near a small vega, old irrigation canals, and agricultural fields. We report the following taxa: Abrothrix andinus, Phyllotis xanthopygus, Phyllotis sp., Neotomys ebriosus, Chinchilla chinchilla, Lagidium sp., Ctenomys sp. y Abrocoma cinerea. Several craniodental characters that differentiate Chinchilla from Lagidium on the basis of fragmentary remains are described in detail, two taxa widely used as a basic resource in the economy of human populations in the Central Andes. Excepting Neotomys ebriosus, all the species of the archaeological site live in this area of the argentine Puna. The record of this species is noteworthy because their modern populations have been only documented in the more humid eastern mountain ranges of the region. The temporal amplitude, the exiguity of the archaeological sample, the absence of comparable modern samples, as well as the anthropogenic transformation of the local landscape prevent the reconstruction of paleoenvironmental conditions based on the Tebenquiche Chico rodents.