Animal exploitation in the transitional puna of Chaschuil (Catamarca, Argentina): Zooarchaeological analysis of two occupations of the San Francisco Inca site (ca. tenth to fifteenth centuries AD)

This article discusses the strategies related to the exploitation of animals during two occupations of the San Francisco Inca site (transitional puna of Chaschuil, Catamarca, Argentina): an Inca occupation (ca. fourteenth to fifteenth century AD) and a pre-Inca occupation (ca. tenth to thirteenth century AD). The pre-Inca agropastoralist groups that seasonally occupied the site developed a strategy of diversification, intensification, and the storage of resources of animal origin to face the unpredictability of the puna and the regional context of environmental restriction. This strategy included vicuna hunting, the tendency to avoid the slaughter of llamas during such occupation, the relatively intensive processing of low-return camelid parts, the drying of elements of the axial skeleton, and, possibly, the delayed consumption of bone marrow from the metapodials. During the Inca occupation, the state organized feasts to legitimate their presence in the region and served meals based on the resources provided by wild animals hunted locally (vicuna and, in lesser proportion, rodents, birds, and guanacos). Likewise, we argue that during these feasting events llama sacrifices and dried meat production for delayed consumption in regions of different altitude or for exchange practices might have occurred.