Carlos Raúl Belotti Lopez De Medina
Grant Type
Post PhD Research GrantInstitutional Affiliation
CONICETGrant number
Gr. 9968Approve Date
August 26, 2020Project Title
Belotti Lopez De Medina, Carlos (CONICET) "A zooarchaeological database for meta-analysis of reported archaeofaunas from the South-Central Andes"CARLOS BELOTTI LOPEZ DE MEDINA, CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina, was awarded a grant in August 2020 to aid research on “A Zooarchaeological Database for Meta-Analysis of Reported Archaeofaunas from the South-Central Andes.” The aim of this project is to test current hypotheses on Andean pre-Hispanic human-animal interactions since the end of the Pleistocene and up to the Late Holocene. A systematic survey and quantitative synthesis of zooarchaeological reports from the study area are being carried out to that end. The survey covers bibliographic, archaeological and zooarchaeological variables and the resulting data is stored on a spatial-relational database, allowing therefore for diverse quantitative and geographic approaches to analysis. Substantial progress was made on the objectives stated in the original proposal: the literature survey covers in detail the 1967-2009 publication period and a battery of analyses was conducted on bibliographic and paleobiologic variables, and their preliminary results were presented at two national conferences and published in two scientific journals. The most noteworthy results of these studies were: 1) Publications and gray literature showed a sustained but asymmetrical development in zooarchaeology among the countries of the study area; 2) Taxonomic diversity revealed diverging trends within the Andean terrestrial ecoregions and ecozones throughout the Holocene, which were interpreted as proxies for past average diet breadths.
Publications
Belotti Lopez De Medina, Carlos (2024) Diet breadth and biodiversity in the pre-hispanic South-Central Andes (Western South America) during the Holocene: An exploratory analysis and review. The Holocene, 0(0). https://doi.org/10.1177/09596836241231446 Belotti Lopez De Medina, Carlos (2023) A quantitative look at the first four decades of the zooarchaeology of the South-Central Andes. Journal of the Museum of Anthropology , 16 (2), 425–438. https://doi.org/10.31048/1852.4826.v16.n2.41246