This article focuses on the architectural characteristics of a household compound in Cardonal, an early agricultural village located in the southern Cajón Valley (Catamarca, north-western Argentina) dated to the first centuries ad. When architecture, as landscape, is understood as the result of the daily tasks of living, the research carried out in Cardonal gives substance to the ways in which the materiality of everyday life forged the building of this prehistoric village. Cardonal is an example of how houses and architecture are not static but fluidly changing with the contingencies of life.

Recent advances in the archaeology of lowland South America are furthering our understanding of the Holocene development of plant cultivation and domestication, cultural niche construction, and relationships between environmental changes and cultural strategies of food production. This article offers new data on plant and landscape management and mobility in Southwestern Amazonia during a period of environmental change at the Middle to Late Holocene transition, based on archaeobotanical analysis of the Monte Castelo shellmound, occupied between 6000 and 650 yr BP and located in a modern, seasonally flooded savanna–forest mosaic. Through diachronic comparisons of carbonized plant remains, phytoliths, and starch grains, we construct an ecology of resource use and explore its implications for the long-term history of landscape formation, resource management practices, and mobility. We show how, despite important changes visible in the archaeological record of the shellmound during this period, there persisted an ancient, local, and resilient pattern of plant management which implies a degree of stability in both subsistence and settlement patterns over the last 6000 years. This pattern is characterized by management practices that relied on increasingly diversified, rather than intensive, food production systems. Our findings have important implications in debates regarding the history of settlement permanence, population growth, and carrying capacity in the Amazon basin.

In this work, several attributes of the internal morphology of drupaceous fruits found in the archaeological site Monte Castelo (Rondonia, Brazil) are analyzed by means of two different imaging methods. The aim is to explore similarities and differences in the visualization and analytical properties of the images obtained via High Resolution Light Microscopy and X-ray micro-computed tomography (X-ray MicroCT) methods. Both provide data about the three-layered pericarp (exo-, meso- and endocarp) of the studied exemplars, defined by cell differentiation, vascularisation, cellular contents, presence of sclerenchyma cells and secretory cavities. However, it is possible to identify a series of differences between the information that can be obtained through each of the methods. These variations are related to the definition of contours and fine details of some characteristics, their spatial distribution, size attributes, optical properties and material preservation. The results obtained from both imaging methods are complementary, contributing to a more exhaustive morphological study of the plant remains. X-ray MicroCT in phase-contrast mode represents a suitable non-destructive analytic technique when sample preservation is required.

This study describes the composition and provenance of dense bodies or structures present in uncharred plant vestiges recovered at Monte Castelo (6000–700 cal. AP-SW Amazonia). It aimed to disclose some aspects of this plant remains’ interactions with the sedimentary matrix of the site over the 200 years (at least) since its initial deposit, from the point of view of the soft tissue mineralization processes. Two specimens were examined using XFCT, X-ray MicroCT, and SEM-EDS techniques to reveal the presence and distribution of Ca, K, Mn, Fe, Ti, Si, S, Cu, Br, Rb, Sr, Zn, and Zr. These attributes were integrated with compositional ED-XRF and XRD measured data from the sedimentary substrate. Results show that some of the chemical elements present in solid bodies and anatomical structures of the plant remains refer to the sedimentary environment, while others have an endogenous origin. These include mainly Rb and Br, which were interpreted as the result of degradation processes of the internal tissues, where they are mainly present. Except Sr and Zr, a portion of all the other elements entered and disperse into the sample structures from the sedimentary substrate. Its presence is attributable to mechanisms such as attachment, diffusion and impregnation through the outermost tissues, where they are mostly concentrated. The composition of most of the dense bodies consists of both endogenous and exogenous elements.

En este artículo presentamos una máscara del noroeste de Argentina que es uno de los objetos de cobre más antiguos de la región andina. Damos a conocer sus particulares condiciones de hallazgo y los fechados radiocarbónicos asociados. Informamos también los resultados de los análisis arqueometalúrgicos efectuados sobre ella. Este hallazgo se enmarca en el contexto de las evidencias tempranas de metalurgia de cobre en el área andina. Debido a que se trata del único caso conocido en la literatura especializada de una máscara de cobre tan antigua, la comparamos con ejemplares de máscaras arqueológicas confeccionadas en otros materiales del Noroeste Argentino.