Arqueofauna de vertebrados do holoceno final na planície costeira do extremo sul catarinense: o caso do Sítio Sambaqui Lagoa dos Freitas.

Abstract

The data we presented here result from the research project “Archeology Between Rivers: From Urussanga’s and Mampitubas’s [rivers]” (AERUM, in the Portuguese acronym). The Sambaqui Lagoa dos Freitas is located in the extreme Southern coast of Santa Catarina state, Balneário Rincão municipality, locality of Lagoa dos Freitas (UTM 22J 673772/6812135). This archaeology site is a deposit of shells (known as concheiro) over dunes from the Holocene. Radiocarbon dates show a chronology with two different occupation horizons: The first between 1.360-1.275 cal AP. and the second between 485-305 cal AP. The objective of this work was to characterize the exploration of faunal resources in each occupation period. We carried out a zooarcheological study from the vertebrate faunal groups in each soil horizon and found: 5263 remains and 75 individuals in the layer I (more recente) and 6433 remains and 104 individuals in the layer II (older), both with a sum of 11696 remains and 179 individuals. The identified remains belong to four orders of vertebrates, being them Chondrichthyes, Teleostei, Mammalia and Aves. The zooarcheological analysis indicate that, in the Lagoa dos Freitas site, the environmental exploration by the occupants from two distinct periods was directely related to specific activities. Till now, we can consider this site as a camping to taiacuids’ hunting and estuarine fishing of catfish and crook. Faunistic results do not indicate changes in the patterns of capture, handling and deposition of the faunal remains that identificate cultural transitions in the two occupation periods, except quantitative, stratigraphical and chronological patterns.