Browsing by Author "Santoro, Calogero M."

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    1000 years of population, warfare, and climate change in pre-Columbian societies of the Central Andes
    (2023) Lima, Mauricio; Gayo, Eugenia M.; Gurruchaga, Andone; Estay, Sergio A.; Santoro, Calogero M.
    Different Andean societies underwent processes of expansion and collapse during propitious or adverse climate conditions, resource boost or depletion along with population variations. Previous studies have emphasized that demographic collapses of polities in the Central Andes Area were triggered by warfare and the negative impacts of fluctuating climate (droughts) on crop productivity. Nevertheless, the interactions between climatic variability, demography and warfare have been less thoroughly evaluated. We develop population dynamic models to test feedback relationships between population growth, climate change and warfare in the Central Andes, where considerable regional hydroclimate variations have occurred over a millennium. Through population models, we found out that the rise and demise of social polities in the northern coast of the Central Andes appear to be a consequence of climate change. In contrast, for the highlands of Peru and the Titicaca basin, population models suggest that warfare intensity has a negative effect on population growth rates.
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    A Partially Complete Skeleton of Hippidion Saldiasi Roth, 1899 (Mammalia: Perissodactyla) from the Late Pleistocene of the High Andes in Northern Chile
    (2020) Labarca, Rafael; Caro, Francisco J.; Villavicencio, Natalia A.; Capriles, Jose M.; Briones, Esteban; Latorre, Claudio; Santoro, Calogero M.
    South America is well known for its abundance of Quaternary fossiliferous deposits, but well-preserved fossil remains from well-dated sites are scarce in the Atacama Desert and adjacent arid Andes. Here we report on a partially complete skeleton (46%) of a single young (ca. 3-4 years old) extinct horse discovered in the Salar de Surire, a salt flat located on the Andean altiplano of northern Chile (4,250 m asl). Comparative and osteometric morphological analyses identify the specimen as a South American endemic horse Hippidion saldiasi Roth, 1899. A direct AMS radiocarbon date on bone collagen yielded a calibrated age of 13,170 cal yr BP (2 sigma range: 13,300-13,060 cal yr BP) indicating that it lived near the end of the last glaciation. The body mass of the individual was calculated at approximately 326.4 kg, close to the upper limit of the larger sizes reported for the genus. Stable isotope evidence shows that the Salar de Surire horse relied on an almost 100% C3 diet that is mostly consistent with Hippidion specimens from other environments that also consumed either mixed C3/C4 or fully C3 diets. This finding is now the southernmost high-elevation record for this species and provides further evidence for the broad geographic and ecological distribution of this genus throughout southern South America.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    Continuities and discontinuities in the socio-environmental systems of the Atacama Desert during the last 13,000 years
    (2017) Santoro, Calogero M.; Capriles, José M.; Gayo Hernández, Eugenia Monserrat; De Porras, María Eugenia; Maldonado, Antonio; Standen, Vivien G.; Latorre H., Claudio; Castro, Victoria; Marquet, P. A. (Pablo A.); Mc Rostie Bustamante, Virginia Bernardita; Uribe, Mauricio; Valenzuela, Daniela; Ugalde, Paula C.; Angelo, Dante
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    High- and low-latitude forcings drive Atacama Desert rainfall variations over the past 16,000 years
    (2021) Gonzalez-Pinilla, Francisco J.; Latorre, Claudio; Rojas, Maisa; Houston, John; Ignacia Rocuant, M.; Maldonado, Antonio; Santoro, Calogero M.; Quade, Jay; Betancourt, Julio L.
    Late Quaternary precipitation dynamics in the central Andes have been linked to both high- and low-latitude atmospheric teleconnections. We use present-day relationships between fecal pellet diameters from ashy chinchilla rats (Abrocoma cinerea) and mean annual rainfall to reconstruct the timing and magnitude of pluvials (wet episodes) spanning the past 16,000 years in the Atacama Desert based on 81 C-14-dated A. cinerea paleomiddens. A transient climate simulation shows that pluvials identified at 15.9 to 14.8, 13.0 to 8.6, and 8.1 to 7.6 ka B.P. can be linked to North Atlantic (high-latitude) forcing (e. g., Heinrich Stadial 1, Younger Dryas, and Bond cold events). Holocene pluvials at 5.0 to 4.6, 3.2 to 2.1, and 1.4 to 0.7 ka B.P. are not simulated, implying low-latitude internal variability forcing (i.e., ENSO regime shifts). These results help constrain future central Andean hydroclimatic variability and hold promise for reconstructing past climates from rodent middens in desert ecosystems worldwide.
  • Thumbnail Image
    Item
    The Dry Puna as an ecological megapatch and the peopling of South America: Technology, mobility, and the development of a late Pleistocene/early Holocene Andean hunter-gatherer tradition in northern Chile
    (2017) Osorio, Daniela; Steele, James; Sepúlveda, Marcela; Gayo Hernández, Eugenia Monserrat; Capriles, José M.; Herrera, Katherine; Ugalde, Paula; De Pol-Holz, Ricardo; Latorre H., Claudio; Santoro, Calogero M.