Interactions between Societies and Plants during the Mid-Late Holocene in the Northern Area of Rio de la Plata (Uruguay)

Abstract

In the last two decades a number findings of wild plants together with cultigens account for the wide usage of plants in the Mid-late Holocene societies who lived on the coast of the Rio de la Plata and adjacent areas of the Parana and Uruguay rivers and the Atlantic coast (W53–63 and S30–35). We present an overview of those archaeological models developed in the region in connection to the role of gathering and domestication from the Mid– Holocene on. We also explore the presence and trajectory of early cultigens in the general framework of a holistic management of the plant environment by analyzing a case in the Archaeology of the Lower Basin of the Santa Lucia River. It is suggested that the knowledge about plant domestication was present and widespread in the Río de la Plata region much earlier than what was being handled by researchers decades ago, as part of a broad set of interactions of those societies with plants.