Nuevas dataciones sobre restos humanos del centro de Argentina y su aporte a la discusión del poblamiento de la región

In central Argentina, the earliest evidence of human presence, recorded between ca. 13,000 and 10,600 cal BP, is scarce, while after 9600 cal BP the archaeological signal becomes more intense. Within this later period are the human remains recovered from the localities of Jesús María and Ascochinga (Córdoba Province, Argentina), which are the focus of this study. In Jesús María, J. Delprato excavated three spatially close burials in 1951, while in Ascochinga, he excavated a burial site in 1959. The former were analysed by Alfredo Castellanos and all the human remains were curated in the Castellanos collection, housed in the Florentino and Carlos Ameghino Museum of the Universidad Nacional de Rosario. This paper presents new chronological information of two of these individuals, recently dated by AMS to ca. 8500 and 7809 cal BP, respectively, placing them in the middle Holocene. Isotopic information was also obtained providing a first approximation to the diet of these individuals. The implications of these dates are analysed to discuss the peopling of central Argentina, considering all the available dates for the region. It is concluded that the dating of these human remains to the middle Holocene reinforces the archaeological evidence corresponding to this period, following two millennia with low archaeological signal in the region after the Pleistocene-Holocene Transition, supporting the proposals about a new colonization process of central Argentina.