Les techniques de chasse aux mammifères marins des chasseurs-cueilleurs de Patagonie australe

Abstract

For more than six millennia until the beginning of the 20th century hunter-gatherers at the southernmost edge of South America, along the coasts of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego, maintained a way of life based on the exploitation of marine species and mainly hunting marine mammals and birds, but also fishing, collecting shellfish and occasionally hunting terrestrial mammals.Marine mammal hunting was essential because of the high calorie intake allowed by these very fatty animals. These are mainly otarids (sea lions and south American fur seal) that were hunted on land. Especially young animals were captured using cudgels or harpoons and spears on the rockeries or at the sea, which required developed harpooning techniques designed to prevent the animal from escaping into a hostile environment to humans, the sea. The killing of the animal with a spear followed. Thus, throughout the millennia, sites of marine nomads reveal harpoon points with detachable single barded harpoon heads, and multi-barbed, non-detachable spear points of diverse morphology and versatile function.The scavenging of naturally stranded whales is well documented in ethnohistorical documents, but hunting is rarely reported. In the few known cases, these are collective hunts aimed at killing a big cetacean by spears. But the harpooning to catch of the animal is not proven in any case.

Keywords

• South America
• Patagonia
• hunt
• hunting weapon
• hunter-gatherer
• marine mammal