Ramiro Barberena

RAMIRO BARBERENA, CONICET, Buenos Aires, Argentina, was awarded funding in April 2021 to aid research on “Drivers and Consequences of Past Human Migrations: Life-history Approach for the Southern Andes.” Migrations are an intrinsic aspect of human societies, past and present. This global character can be used to build a comparative perspective seeking to understand when, how, and why do human groups abandon their territories, whether voluntarily or by coercion. In this project we developed a bottom-up approach to human life-histories linking the micro-scale of the individual with the level of households, communities, and larger social groups from the southern Andes of Argentina. Our approach is based on an interdisciplinary bioarchaeological study of burial sites from the last 1000 years in the Uspallata Valley, combining isotopic studies of human diet past territories, and migrations, demographic profiles of the sites with migrants and locals, causes of the death, and biological distances and kinship organization as revealed by ancient DNA. This project actively integrates at all stages the indigenous Huarpe descendants of past human societies from Uspallata, aiming at a multi-vocal perspective where scientific studies and indigenous voices complement each other, making archaeology relevant not only to understand the past, but to forge stronger social connections.