
Maria M. Sampietro VattuoneNational University of Tucumán | UNT · Facultad de Ciencias Naturales
Maria M. Sampietro Vattuone
Dr in Archaeology
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April 2022 - June 2022
Publications
Publications (144)
El mapa geomorfológico de la Bardena Blanca fue elaborado a partir de la información de campo y cartográfica acumulada a lo largo de varios proyectos de investigación sobre la geomorfología de Las Bardenas Reales. El objetivo principal es la representación gráfica de las morfologías existentes, clasificadas y ordenadas cronológicamente siguiendo un...
La aplicación de la cartografía geomorfológica a los estudios geoarqueológicos es de gran interés para la construcción de modelos evolutivos que integren la información de los cambios del paisaje con las ocupaciones humanas. El uso de drones provee una gran ventaja para la elaboración de este tipo de cartografía. El presente mapa ofrece información...
In this article we examine the effects of surficial runoff on the visibility, preservation and spatial distribution of pre-Hispanic pottery sherds (ca. 100-1.535 a.C.) in alluvial fans of the Sierra de Quilmes (Northwest of Argentina) to evaluate the validity of spatial patterns of occupation based in part on them. Archaeological surveys across the...
Background: The contributions of ethnobotany are essential for understanding the relationship of local communities with their environment and, therefore, for planning effective conservation and management measures. In this paper, we present the results of the first quantitative approach to the ethnobotany of Indian communities of the Santa María va...
El presente trabajo de investigación tiene como objetivo la utilización de los fitolitos como proxy para realizar la reconstrucción paleoambiental de la sección media del valle de Santa María (Tucumán - Argentina) durante el Holoceno superior. Además, considerar esto en el contexto paleoambiental regional y global. Para ello, se tomaron muestras de...
Presentamos un complejo minero dedicado a la extracción del sílex denominado Botorrita-Monegros, demandado en diferentes momentos de la Prehistoria. Para su documentación se programó una prospección a tres escalas: 1) prospección superficial intensiva para acotar las áreas de interés; 2) ortofotografía y MDE de las zonas de mayor potencial mediante...
Knowledge about the lithology of rock art mediums is important to establish the consequences of weathering processes affecting the rock and its heritage. Besides, it allows us to determine the best methods for preserving rock art from natural and human impacts. The objective of this paper is to assess the degree to which degradative processes have...
The aim of this paper is to present a detailed geomorphological map of the western piedmont of Cumbres Calchaquíes (Tucumán Province, NW Argentina) bounded by the Amaicha River to the south and the administrative border with Salta Province to the north. It contains information about geomorphological units, their relative ages, and morphogenetic pro...
Most studies on the geomorphological evolution of the Holocene from the Ebro depression (NE Spain) are focused on the period up to the Roman Epoch (218 BC–476 AD) while some references to medieval (476 AD–15th century) deposits are also occasionally dated. This paper focuses on the establishment of aggradation units on the valley bottoms and slopes...
The Monforte de Moyuela dam, also known as Ermita de la Virgen del Pilar dam, is a Roman reservoir built on a tributary of the Aguasvivas River (Ebro basin, Spain). A multidisciplinary study has been carried out to investigate this kind of Roman water infrastructure. It is the fifth‐highest dam (16.8 m) in the Iberian Peninsula and the seventh in t...
The polyphasic evolution of the testimonial buttes in the central area of the Ebro basin (Los Monegros) is analysed. This is a semiarid area that favours high erosion rates. An evolutionary model of the Jubierre hills is presented that shows the environmental cycles represented by aggradational and degradative processes on the slopes that resulted...
The ruins of the Medieval castle and village of El Castellar are located on an abrupt 1.2-km-long scarp of Miocene gypsums, in the central sector of the Ebro depression. The Medieval remains of the main El Castellar castle are perched on a 100 m cliff on the Ebro River. Considering the historical and geoarchaeological relevance of El Castellar sett...
El estudio de los sistemas de poblamiento de la Edad de Bronce requiere un análisis crítico del registro arqueológico que supere lecturas directas y mecánicas del mismo. Tradicionalmente se ha considerado que al Norte del río Ebro predominaba un patrón de asentamiento basado en ocupaciones al abrigo de tozales o sobre someras elevaciones,
frente a...
The Atacama coast is located in an area with a current high risk of tsunami, and the sedimentary deposits found in the Bahía Inglesa area, in the Morro sector, clearly indicate that this was also the case in the past. This investigation analyzes a pale-otsunami sedimentary deposit consisting of a block field associated with three sand lobes oriente...
The cyclical evolution of the testimonial buttes in the central area of the Ebro depression (Los Monegros) is analysed. It is a semiarid environment that favours high erosive rates. The aim of this paper is to obtain an evolutionary model of the Jubierre hills that shows the environmental cycles represented by aggradational and degradative processe...
This study, focused on the well-exposed terrace deposits of the Guadalaviar and Turia rivers and associated slopes, provides a better understanding of the genetic connection between river-terrace sediments and slope accumulations in a setting influenced by temperate to cold (extraglacial) climates: the Sierra de Albarracín and Alfambra–Teruel depre...
El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar los efectos a largo plazo producidos por las ocupaciones prehispánicas agroalfareras del valle de Tafí, Noroeste Argentino, realizando una síntesis de los procesos degradativos generados por tales poblaciones y su repercusión en la configuración actual del paisaje desde una perspectiva geoarqueológica, integra...
The Roca San Miguel (RSM) archaeological site was occupied during Mousterian times. Here we present a geoarchaeological and paleoenvironmental reconstruction of the site. Five stratigraphic units (A to E) formed by different archaeological levels are identified. Three optically stimulated luminescence (OSL) ages show that Unit A dates to between 16...
Se dan a conocer los resultados de los análisis de fitolitos recuperados de secuencias pedosedimentarias de terrazas de cultivo de la localidad arqueológica El Pichao (valle de Santa María, Tucumán, Argentina) pertenecientes al Período de Desarrollos Regionales (ca. 1000 - 600 AP). Los fitolitos fueron extraídos del sedimento mediante procesamiento...
Tafoni, produced by physicochemical weathering of sandstones, are abundant in the Cerro Colorado (Córdoba province, Argentina). Many of the rock shelters are decorated with rock art of high heritage significance. This art belongs to semisedentary communities from the Late Prehispanic Period (ca. 1550–350 AP). They include morphologies inherited fro...
The Atacama coast is located in an area with a current high risk of tsunami, and the sedimentary deposits found in the Bahía Inglesa area, in the Morro sector, clearly indicate that this was also the case in the past. Thisinvestigation analyzes a paleotsunami sedimentary deposit consisting of a block field associated with three sand lobes oriented...
Few rock art studies include the state of alteration analysis. This paper proposes a digital non-invasive comprehensive methodology for assessing the state of alteration of rock art. We used a detailed photographic record for making alteration maps, 2D/3D models, micro-topographic reconstructions, weathering models by zones, and the characterizatio...
In-stream mining is a common aggregate mining practice around the world. However, the impacts of such practice are not always taken into account when the mines are established, and the environmental cost of in-stream aggregate mining is generally not assessed. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impacts of aggregate mining conducted in La...
En el yacimiento de La Leandra (La Muela, Zaragoza) afloran unidades miocenas lacustres que incluyen habituales niveles de especial concentración de nódulos de sílex. Éstos han sido explotados durante varios periodos y, dadas las características
climáticas y demográficas, conservan en ocasiones la topografía original desde su explotación. Con el ob...
El yacimiento musteriense de Roca San Miguel se sitúa en el curso alto del río Noguera Ribagorzana, en el Prepirineo de Huesca. Aunque en la actualidad se extiende por una ladera con la apariencia de un sitio al aire libre, un resalte de arenisca hoy erosionado debió generar un abrigo rocoso que prestaría protección a sus ocupantes prehistóricos. S...
La antigua ciudad de Quilmes se localiza en el valle del río Santa María, en el noroeste de
la provincia de Tucumán (Argentina). El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar el estado
de conservación y los procesos degradativos que la afectan desde una perspectiva
geoarqueológica. La ciudad está ubicada en un área de conos aluviales coalescentes
activo...
The scarp of Remolinos-Juslibol is an abrupt relief formed by Miocene gypsums located on the left bank of the Ebro River, in the vicinity of the city of Zaragoza. This work provides data for the reconstruction of the channel morphology and dynamics of the Ebro River and its interaction with the gypsum scarp from the Little Ice Age (LIA) to the pres...
The aim of this study was to record the changes in the Cafayate region, Northwestern Argentina, over the last 50 years (1969–2019), with a focus on fluvial and dune systems, together with human activity. The multi-temporal analysis of different kinds of remote sensor images and field surveys allowed us to establish that the final section of the San...
Los estudios geoarqueológicos constituyen un gran aporte frente a otros enfoques para la comprensión de las sociedades humanas del pasado, dada la complejidad que pueden alcanzar en el manejo de múltiples líneas de evidencia. La construcción de un modelo geoarqueológico de una región implica el manejo conjunto de diversas escalas temporales y espac...
Alluvial fans are typical geomorphic features of arid and semiarid mountain areas. Most archaeological sites in Santa María valley (NW Argentina) are located on this kind of landform. The aims of this paper are to describe the geomorphological context and assess the state of conservation of four archaeological sites on the piedmont of Sierra de Qui...
The Monte Desert is the most arid rangeland in Argentina. Its northern portion, the High Monte ecoregion, is a geomorphologically complex area, characterized by mountain and bolsons landforms. Yet, most studies about plant diversity in the area have disregarded the altitudinal gradient. We examined the patterns of species richness, composition, and...
El sitio arqueológico El Pichao ha sido estudiado desde diversos aspectos, sin embargo, hasta la actualidad no se había llevado a cabo el análisis antracológico de las muestras recuperadas en unidades residenciales del período de Desarrollos Regionales (1000-535 AP). Este tema se aborda mediante el estudio de carbones obtenidos en la unidad STucTav...
En este trabajo se presentan los resultados del análisis de microfósiles biosilíceos recuperados de perfiles localizados en terrazas de cultivo de la localidad de Molle Yaco (valle de Santa María, Tucumán, Argentina), pertenecientes al período Formativo (ca. 100-1000 DC). Se analizaron cinco perfiles, de los cuales cuatro fueron excavados en terraz...
Relict talus slopes are of great interest for the reconstruction of Quaternary paleoenvironments. In this study, a special type of talus slope found in the central zone of the Iberian Peninsula is analyzed, which we will refer to as a talus-palaeovalley alignment. These are talus sequences that conserve the intermediate paleovalleys, and are arrang...
A comprehensive morphostratigraphic and chronological study of the complete set of Holocene tephras from Tafí and Santa María valleys (northwestern Argentina), including analyses of compositional characteristics, is presented. Five ash tephras are recognized: V0 (El Rincón), V1a (Carreras 1a ash), V1b (Carreras 1b ash), V2a (Carreras 2 ash), and V2...
The objective of this paper is to make a detailed and multiproxy geomorphological study of the middle section of Amaicha River in Northwest Argentina. The obtained evolutionary model and chronological context will be linked with previous models to include the study area in a regional context. Finally, our model will be used as a morphochronological...
The lower Gállego River has been strongly degraded since the 1960s due to human activity (gravel mining, dump accumulation, channeling works), which has produced a deep channel incision. Although these human-driven processes are usually reported in fluvial bibliography, in this case, more complex results are observable. For instance, regarding the...
This paper presents the results obtained from the analysis of the assemblage of plant microremains recovered from profiles in agricultural terraces in the archaeological site of Yasyamayo (Santa María Valley, Tucumán, Argentina) and which correspond to the Regional Developments Period (ca. 1000-600 BP). The phytoliths were extracted by physical and...
A synthetic history of human land use
Humans began to leave lasting impacts on Earth's surface starting 10,000 to 8000 years ago. Through a synthetic collaboration with archaeologists around the globe, Stephens et al. compiled a comprehensive picture of the trajectory of human land use worldwide during the Holocene (see the Perspective by Roberts)....
Desde 2016 se vienen estudiando minas de sílex prehistóricas situadas en la localidad Zaragoza de La Muela, probablemente neolíticas. El núcleo principal se encuentra en las partidas de La Leandra-El Cerro y parecen extenderse por los alrededores en una extensión no menor de 90 ha.
Con objeto de acotar las principales zonas de explotación e identif...
The Sierra de Aconquija is a recently uplifted mountain chain in NW Argentina. The NE side of the sierra is drained by the Muñoz and Los Alisos rivers – whose base level is the Las Carreras Depression that is located to the SW of the Tafí valley. Two of the major headwaters of the Muñoz River suffered during its Holocene development from piracy by...
En este trabajo se presentan los resultados obtenidos al estudiar un conjunto de restos antracológicos recuperados en un perfil estratigráfico ubicado en el valle de Tafí (Tucumán, Argentina). La identificación taxonómica de los macrorrestos se realizó mediante la comparación de los carbones con una colección de referencia de cortes histológicos qu...
In the drylands, the geomorphologi-cal responses facing Holocene environmental changes left clear features on the sedimentary records. In several cases, these records involve archaeological features that could be analyzed from a geoarchaeological perspective in order to reconstruct the site context and the post-deposition-al evolutionary processes...
We described a fossil small mammal assemblage from La Mesada (2250 m), Tafí valley, Tucumán, Argentina, recovered from levels
referred to late Pleistocene – early Holocene. Gastric corrosion in bones and teeth indicates that the assemblage was generated by the trophic activities of owls. The assemblage is composed by 14 species of rodents: 12 livin...
Fluvial basins located on the NE side of the Sierra de Aconquija and facing the Tafí valley (NW Argentina) enable a study of the sedimentary records of valleys and alluvial fans that have been subject to glacial and periglacial dynamics since the Fini-Pleistocene to Upper Holocene. i) The oldest morphosedimentary unit (H1A) encompasses the Late Gla...
Tafí valley is an elongated tectonic basin of about 450 km² located in NW Argentina in a mountainous frame of metamorphic and granitic Precambrian-Paleozoic rocks belonging to Sierras Pampeanas. This study presents the first detailed geomorphological map of the area. The most representative landforms date to the Lateglacial-Holocene, with four diff...
El valle de Tafí es una pequeña cuenca intermontana de las Sierras Pampeanas del Noroeste Argentino. Los
estudios geomorfológicos efectuados han permitido reconocer la existencia de registros morfosedimentarios
del Holoceno de gran interés para la reconstrucción paleoambiental regional. El estudio de las principales
acumulaciones de laderas, terraz...
The area of Alfambra (NE Spain) is very representative of the relief evolution of the Eastern Iberian ranges. The geomorphological cartography (Main Map) includes the northern sector of the Alfambra-Teruel Neogene depression and its mountainous surroundings. The cartographic process started by using aerial photographs (1:30000 scale) and fieldwork....
The Tafí Valley is a small basin located in the northern sector of the Sierras Pampeanas in Northwest Argentina. The geomorphological studies made in the area showed the presence of very representative Holocene morpho-sedimentary records, which are useful for regional paleoenvironmental reconstruction. The study of the main slope accumulations, flu...
The Santa María valley is located in the northern sector of the Sierras Pampeanas in Northwest Argentina. In spite of its arid characteristics, it was a densely populated area during the Pre-hispanic period. The populations developed an agropastoral economy, taking advantage of the wetter epochs that characterized some periods. The study of fluvio-...
A geomorphological cartography of the Cafayate depression (NW Argentina) at a scale of 1:20,000 is presented. The Main Map was made with satellite images from 2009 to 2016 and aerial photographs from various dates. The area was classified into three categories of geomorphological dynamics according the type of fluvio-aeolian interaction. Anastomosi...
We studied the fire record and its environmental consequences during the Holocene in the Central Ebro Basin. This region is very sensitive to environmental changes due to its semiarid conditions, lithological features and a continuous human presence during the past 6000 years. The study area is a 6 m buried sequence of polycyclic soils developed ap...
Information about Holocene sedimentary records in two semiarid areas in Spain and Argentina was gathered to know the role of the anthropic influence on landscape evolution. In both cases, four aggradational units separated by incision phases have been differentiated. Due to the confluence of anthropic indicators, the H1C subunit (ca. 2.45-ca. 1.5 k...
The study of human‐driven processes is useful to gain a better understanding of thelong‐term evolution of land degradation, soil erosion and geomorphologyas well as resource availability for human settlement. The objective of this paper is to identify the long‐term results of human impact on the vulnerable dryland ecosystems in Northwest Argentina,...
La popularización del uso de los Vehículos Aéreos no Tripulados (VANT), o drones, está
influyendo enormemente a la disciplina arqueológica. La incorporación de esta técnica con los procesamientos pertinentes permite una aproximación de gran detalle al conocimiento de los sitios arqueológicos. El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar seis casos dist...
In landscapes that are extremely sensitive to small environmental changes, like some Mediterranean areas, archaeological contexts could present some problems to their interpretation and evolutionary reconstruction. This is the case of Los Pedregales archaeological site, located in the Hoya de Huesca (NE of Spain), where several stone mounds of unkn...
The hazards caused by ravine (quebradas) geomorphological dynamics as consequence of major hydrological events in mountainous areas of Northwest Argentina are little studied. The scarce records for rainfall and river flow are the main limitations. This work provides information about the dynamic functioning of the Blanquito River, located in the Ta...
Abstract Environmental fluctuations during the Holocene caused important landscape changes in the Central Ebro Basin, which is a very sensitive region due to its semiarid climate, lithology, and continuous human presence. Severe erosion processes hinder palaeoenvironmental and archaeological record preservation. Infills of ephemeral stream valleys...
p> Se analizaron procesos de formaci ó n y cronolog í a de niveles de ocupaci ó n de Horco Molle (Tucum á n), localidad emplazada en la parte S de las Selvas Occidentales del Noroeste Argentino. Para ello se efectuaron sondeos y excavaciones, descripciones estratigr á ficas, determinaciones de pH, registro de trazas de alteraci ó n en conjuntos cer...
The Ebro Basin constitutes one of the most representative territories in SW Europe for the study of prehistoric societies during the Pleistocene-Holocene transition. The correlation of palaeoenvironmental and geomorphological proxies obtained from sedimentary records with chronologically well-constrained reference archaeological sites has allowed d...
Flat-bottomed valleys formed by Holocene fills are the most characteristic landforms in the center of the Ebro basin. This paper analyzes, within a regional framework, a small fluvial basin located in the north of the Alcubierre Range. Three Holocene morphosedimentary units (H1-H3) and a sub-functional level (H4) are identified. These units are rep...
The most important stratified screes of the Iberian Range are found in Sierra de Albarracín. These slope deposits have been traditionally considered, without absolute datings, as having been formed during various Pleistocene cold phases. The aim of this paper is to establish the sedimentological, morphological, chronological, and paleoenvironmental...
El objetivo de este trabajo es mostrar el valor de las cenizas volcánicas presentes en los perfiles estratigráficos del valle de Tafí y zonas aledañas para la realización del modelo evolutivo general holoceno de la región, de interés geomorfológico, paleoambiental y geoarqueológico. Las cenizas previamente identificadas en el campo se situaron en s...
Resumen: En el cañón de Calomarde, Sierra de Albarracín, se localiza una de las acumulaciones de derrubios estratificados más importante de la Cordillera Ibérica. Estos depósitos de ladera han sido atribuidos tradicionalmente a periodos fríos del Pleistoceno. En el perfil analizado en este trabajo se han diferenciado cuatro etapas de este tipo de a...
The Tafi Valley has a deep-rooted archaeological research tradition in Northwest Argentina. Most the archaeological settlements are from the Formative Period (500 BC – 1000 AC), these have been studied from several perspectives. This article presents the results of non-destructive ED-XRF analyses on exceptionally manufactured beads dating to 1560 ±...