The exploitation of RHEIDAE in Pampa and Patagonia (Argentina) as recorded by chroniclers, naturalists and voyagers

Documents from chroniclers, naturalists and voyagers that traveled across the Pampas and Patagonia (Argentina) between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries are analyzed with the aim of building material expectations about the profit of Rheidae used by the historical known natives. This corpus of data is treated as a heuristic tool in the study of local hunter-gatherer's archaeological sites, since bones and eggshells of rheids are recorded in most of the Pampean and Patagonian archaeological contexts from early to late Holocene times. Although remains of specimens of this ostrich-like family conforms a small portion of the whole archaeofaunal assemblages, chronicler's narratives describe an intensive and preferential use of the nandu (rheas) by the natives. The proposal considers that it is possible to use the ethnohistorical record as a tool to generate material expectations by means of analogies, in the same way that the ethnographical, ethnoarchaeological and experimental studies are used. However, difficulties appear when applying the ethnohistorical information to the archaeological record, considering that those descriptions are involved in analytical categories related to the voyager's historical and social contexts. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.