Patagonia : Natural History, Prehistory, and Ethnography at the Uttermost End of the Earth

by McEwan, Colin; Borrero, Luis Alberto; Prieto, Alfredo

• ISBN13: 9780691058498
• ISBN10: 0691058490
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1998-01-01
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

Some fourteen to ten thousand years ago, as ice-caps shrank and glaciers retreated, the first bands of hunter-gatherers began to colonize the continental extremity of South America -- "the uttermost end of the earth". Their arrival marked the culmination of humankind's epic journey to people the globe. Now they are extinct. This book tells their story. The book describes how these intrepid nomads confronted a hostile climate every bit as forbidding as iceage Europe as they penetrated and settled the wilds of Fuego-Patagonia. Much later, sixteenth-century European voyagers encountered their descendants: the Aonikenk (southern Tehuelche), Selk'nam (Ona), Yamana (Yahgan), and Kawashekar (Alacaluf), living, as the Europeans saw it, in a state of savagery. The first contacts led to tales of a race of giants and, ever since, Patagonia has exerted a special hold on the European imagination. Tragically, by the mid-twentieth century, the last remnants of the indigenous way of life had disappeared for ever. The essays in this volume trace a largely unwritten history of human adaptation, survival, and eventual extinction. Accompanied by 110 striking photographs, they are published to accompany a major exhibition on Fuego-Patagonia at the Museum of Mankind, London.

Table of Contents

Foreword by the Ambassadors of Argentina and Chile to the United Kingdom	6	(1)
Introduction	7	(2)
Colin McEwan
Luis A. Borrero
Alfredo Prieto
The Contributors	9	(1)
Acknowledgements	10	(1)
Key Dates and Events	11	(1)
1 The Natural Setting The Glacial and Post-Glacial Environmental History of Fuego-Patagonia	12	(20)
Robert D. McCulloch
Chalmers M. Clapperton
Jorge Rabassa
Andrew P. Currant
2 The Peopling of Patagonia The First Human Occupation	32	(14)
Luis Alberto Borrero
Colin McEwan
3 Middle to Late Holocene Adaptations in Patagonia	46	(14)
Francisco Mena
4 The Origins of Ethnographic Subsistence Patterns in Fuego-Patagonia	60	(22)
Luis Alberto Borrero
5 The Great Ceremonies of the Selk'nam and the Yamana A Comparative Analysis	82	(28)
Anne Chapman
6 The Meeting of Two Cultures Indians and Colonists in the Magellan Region	110	(17)
Mateo Martinic B.
7 The Patagonian 'Giants'	127	(13)
Jean-Paul Duviols
8 Travelling the Other Way Travel Narratives and Truth Claims	140	(13)
Gillian Beer
9 Tierra del Fuego -- Land of Fire, Land of Mimicry	153	(20)
Michael Taussig
10 Patagonian Painted Cloaks An Ancient Puzzle	173	(13)
Alfredo Prieto
Bibliography	186	(11)
Index	197	(3)
Picture Acknowledgements	200