Alberto Garcia-Piquer

ALBERTO GARCIA-PIQUER, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Barcelona, Spain, was approved funding in October 2022 to aid research on “Nomads of the Inland Sea: Maritime Hunter-gatherer Mobility and Social Interaction in a Southern Patagonian Mixed Environment.” This project examines how hunter-gatherer societies inhabited, moved through, and socially interacted in the inland sea of Ultima Esperanza, Southern Patagonia (Chile), over the long term. Archaeological surveys conducted on two islands and three coastal sectors documented 42 sites distributed along present and ancient shorelines. Excavations at 15 sites provide the first continuous chronological framework for the region, spanning nearly 6,000 years, and reveal a remarkable persistence of human occupation despite environmental changes. Settlement patterns show that people repeatedly returned to the same coastal locations shaped by sea-level history and topography, seeking sheltered waters. Evidence from portage routes points to their importance as nodes in mobility and social networks. Bone and lithic artifacts, as well as non-local raw materials, indicate connections to the southward Fuego-Patagonian world but also inward to the Patagonian steppe. Indeed, rather than supporting a rigid separation between terrestrial and maritime-oriented societies, the Ultima Esperanza Sound, located at the edge of the forest-steppe ecotone, emerges as a social-tone, a shared social landscape where mixed subsistence strategies, lifeways and identities intersected. By foregrounding mobility, interaction, and long-term continuity, this project contributes to broader anthropological discussions on hunter-gatherer lifeways, social interaction, and human resilience in Southernmost South America.