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ARTICLE
Yendegaia Rockshelter, the First Rock Art Site on Tierra del Fuego Island and
Social Interaction in Southern Patagonia (South America)
Francisco Gallardo , Gloria Cabello, Marcela Sepúlveda , Benjamín Ballester, Danae Fiore,
and Alfredo Prieto
Through our research at Bahía Yendegaia on the Beagle Channel in southernmost Patagonia—the ancestral territory of the
Yagán people—we discovered the first rock art site on Tierra del Fuego Island. The geometric visual images found at Yende-
gaia Rockshelter present motifs and compositions analogous to those recorded at other sites on the southern archipelago asso-
ciated with the marine hunter-gatherer tradition. They also show graphic similarities to the rock art paintings attributed to
terrestrial hunter-gatherer populations from the Pali Aike volcanic field, located on the north side of the Strait of Magellan
in mainland Patagonia. Both, however, display quantitative differences, which suggest that they emerged from different visual
traditions but from the same field of graphic solutions. Navigational technology enabled the canoe-faring Fuegian people to
have long-distance mobility and to maintain a flow of social information mediated via visual imagery expressed in material
forms, such as rock art and expressions of portable art. Ethnohistoric reports suggest a cooperative social interaction more
than a competitive one. This cooperative social dynamic would have been necessary for the survival of marine societies in
the harsh environmental conditions characteristic of the southern part of south Patagonia.
Keywords: rock painting, Fuegian Archipelago, southern Patagonia, social interaction, information flows
Durante nuestras investigaciones en Bahía Yendegaia, ubicada en el Canal Beagle, al extremo sur del continente americano y en ter-
ritorio ancestral Yagán, hemos descubierto el primer sitio con pinturas rupestres de la Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego. Allí, las imá-
genes de diseño geométrico presentan formas y composición análogas a aquellas registradas en otros sitios del archipiélago austral.
No ocurre lo mismo con las pinturas del campo volcánico continental de Pali Aikea l norte del Estrecho de Magallanes, universo rupes-
tre cuyas diferencias cuantitativas sugieren otra tradición visual, aunque dentro de un mismo campo de soluciones gráficas. La tec-
nología de navegación de los pueblos del extremo sur de América favoreció la movilidad a gran distancia de los canoeros fueguinos,
quienes habrían mantenido abierto un flujo de información social mediado por imaginarios visuales como el arte rupestre. Esta inter-
acción social, documentada etnohistóricamente, indica que tenía un carácter de cooperación más que de competencia; dinámica
social necesaria, en el contexto de las rigurosas exigencias ambientales del archipiélago fueguino y del sur de Patagonia Meridional.
Palabras clave: pintura rupestre, archipiélago fueguino, extremo sur de Patagonia, interacción social, flujos de información
Francisco Gallardo ▪Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indígenas, Escuela de Antropología, Pontificia Universidad
Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile (fgallardo.ibanez@gmail.com, corresponding author)
Gloria Cabello ▪Centro de Estudios Interculturales e Indígenas, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago; and
Museo Chileno de Arte Precolombino, Santiago, Chile (glcabello@gmail.com)
Marcela Sepúlveda ▪Escuela de Antropología, Pontificia Universidad Católica de Chile, Santiago, Chile; and CNRS-Paris 1,
Paris, France (msepulver@uc.cl)
Benjamín Ballester ▪Universidad de Tarapacá, Santiago, Chile (benjaminballesterr@gmail.com)
Danae Fiore ▪CONICET–Universidad de Buenos Aires, Asociación de Investigaciones Antropológicas, Buenos Aires,
Argentina (danae_fiore@yahoo.es)
Alfredo Prieto ▪Centro de Estudios del Hombre Austral, Instituto de la Patagonia, Universidad de Magallanes, Punta Arenas,
Chile (alfredo.prieto@umag.cl)
Latin American Antiquity, pp. 1–18
Copyright © The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Society for American
Archaeology. This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence
(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction
in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
doi:10.1017/laq.2022.47
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https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2022.47 Published online by Cambridge University Press
For many years, archaeological research in
the southern Patagonia archipelago did
not discover any rock art sites, but this
has been gradually changing. Today, such sites
have been reported across an extensive zone
stretching from Madre de Dios Island to Cape
Horn (González et al. 2014; Jaillet et al. 2010;
Legoupil and Prieto 1991; Muñoz et al. 2016).
Curiously, no rock art site had been reported to
date on the largest island of the archipelago,
the Isla Grande of Tierra del Fuego, which also
has the longest recorded occupational history
(e.g., Oría and Tivoli 2014; Orquera and Piana
1999a). During our investigations at Yendegaia
Bay, on the north shore of the Beagle Channel
(the southern coast of this big island) and in the
ancestral territory of the Yagán people, we dis-
covered the first site containing rock paintings
(Figure 1). Archaeological and ethnographic evi-
dence suggest that the mobility of these canoe-
faring people who navigated around the Tierra
del Fuego archipelago, from the Gulf of Penas to
Cape Horn, enabled regular contact with popula-
tions with different cultural traditions. These
included what have come to be called marine
hunter-gatherers, the Kawashkar in the Magellan
Strait archipelago; the land-based hunter-gatherers
known as the Selk’nam, who inhabited the Isla
Grande; and their mainland neighbors in continen-
tal Patagonia, the Aonikenk. We propose that the
motifs documented at Yendegaia Rockshelter pro-
vide new evidence of these interregional interac-
tions: they bear graphic resemblances that suggest
they formed part of a shared system of information
circulation, albeit with local specificities.
Many studies focusing on social interactions
among hunter-gatherer groups have argued that
they maintained social alliances to reduce socio-
environmental pressures and to favor social
reproduction (Borrero et al. 2011; Gallardo
2009a; Gallardo et al. 2012; Gamble 1982;
Jochim 1983; Webb 1974; Whallon 2006,
2011; Wobst 1977). These authors have shown
that in desert, semidesert, and periglacial en-
vironments, such as the Fuego-Patagonia region,
the circulation of shared motif types, whether on
fixed supports (rock art) or portable ones (mobile
art, body art), contributed to the flow of informa-
tion, the construction of social networks, and the
formation of alliances among distant groups.
The visual scenes found in such harsh en-
vironments are comparable to those recorded for
hunter-gatherer rock art sites located in the south-
ernmost part of the American continent. Given
these similarities, researchers working in localities
of northern, central, and south-central Patagonia
havearguedthatthemotifscapturedinrockart
and in portable art would have fostered interaction
among the populations of the whole region (e.g.,
Acevedo 2015;AcevedoandFiore2020;Carden
and Borges 2017;Cardenetal.2018; Cassiodoro
et al. 2019;Fiore2006,2020;Guichon2018;
Muñoz 2020; Muñoz et al. 2021; Re and Guichon
2014). Long-distance relations among the differ-
ent marine- and land-based human groups of the
Fuego-Patagonia archipelago were also active in
historic times and are described in ethnographic
sources (e.g., Borrero et al. 2011;Bridges1952;
Chapman 1977;Emperaire2002;FitzRoy
1839;Gusinde1986; Orquera and Piana 1999b).
Interactive social networks between groups
with navigation technology are evident in the
region, which would also encourage the circula-
tion of decorated motifs found in mobile art,
especially on the islands of the Strait of Magel-
lan-Tierra del Fuego-Canal Beagle (the southern
part of Isla Grande del Tierra del Fuego), the
northern part of Isla Grande del Tierra del
Fuego, Otway Sound (Riesco and Englefield
Islands), and the southern tip of the mainland
on the Brunswick Peninsula and the southeast
zone of southern Patagonia (Fiore 2006).
In this article, we propose that the rock art of
Yendegaia would have been part of that flow of
social information and the expression of a strategy
in which cooperation coexisted with competition
(Muñoz 2020). To this end, we present this new dis-
covery along with an analysis of the corresponding
historic and archaeological contexts. We then exam-
ine the distribution of rock art in the region from a
quantitative perspective and finally explore the vis-
ual practices and social interactions among different
localities of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago and
southern Patagonian shore of the Magellan Strait.
Yendegaia Bay: Historic and
Archaeological Background
The oldest evidence of human occupation in the
channels of southern Tierra del Fuego dates to
2 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
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7800 cal BP, when a long tradition of coastal
fishing and hunter-gatherer activity emerged
(e.g., Morello et al. 2012; Orquera and Piana
1999a; Orquera et al. 2011). Most archaeological
sites are concentrated along the two shores of the
Beagle Channel in what is today Chilean and
Argentinean territory (Bird 1938a,1946;
Ocampo and Rivas 2002). These sites feature
extensive and dense shell middens made up of
multiple residential occupations (Bird 1938b;
Lothrop 1928); their excavation has yielded a
lengthy stratigraphic sequence of numerous spo-
radic, residential occupation events resulting
from the reuse of certain spaces and the existence
of defined mobility patterns (e.g., Orquera and
Piana 1999a; Orquera et al. 1977). In those local-
ities where systematic surveys were conducted in
the forests upland from the coastline, archaeo-
logical sites were associated with productive
tasks and social functions, including hunting
camps and funerary sites at rockshelters (Ocampo
and Rivas 2002; Piana and Vázquez 2009;Piana
et al. 2006). Based on these findings, it is evident
that the food consumed at these sitescame mainly
from hunting pinnipeds, guanacos, and birds;
fishing; gathering mollusks; and the occasional
consumption of beached whales (Orquera and
Piana 1999a; Zangrando and Tivoli 2015).
The Yagán people, the modern-day descen-
dants of these early populations, inhabited the
Beagle Channel, Cape Horn, and the adjacent
fiords at the time of European contact (Bridges
2001; Chapman 2012; Orquera and Piana
1999b). Generally, immediate families used
bark canoes as their main mode of transportation
when moving from one residential camp to
another. These smaller family groups sometimes
temporarily joined up with other social units for
certain seasonal activities. They usually jour-
neyed along the coast, although they also made
expeditions to other islands, ventured into their
interiors, and even visited the mainland occa-
sionally for specific purposes (Bridges 1884;
Gusinde 1986; Martial 1888).
Figure 1. Distribution of the localities and archaeological sites mentioned in the article.
Gallardo et al. 3YENDEGAIA ROCKSHELTER
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Yendegaia Bay is situated in Yagán territory,
on the northern shore of the Beagle Channel
(southern coast of the Isla Grande of Tierra del
Fuego; Figure 2a). Giacomo Bove (1882,
1883), who commanded the Argentinean South-
ern Expedition, published a map of the bay
showing Yagán settlements, where he calculated
that 40 Indigenous inhabitants lived. He was trea-
ted very well by them, he reported: they took him
on three excursions where he collected skeletons
that he then transported to Europe (Tafuri et al.
2017). The year after Bove’s voyage, in January
1883, the ship La Romanche dropped anchor at
Yendegaia. It was part of the French scientific
expedition commanded by Captain Louis-
Ferdinand Martial (1888). In his writings, the
captain described a half-dozen huts inhabited
by local Indigenous people, some of whom
approached the ship, came up on deck, and
agreed to be photographed (Fiore and Varela
2009). Several years later, Bove’s hunch that
there was a passage from Almirantazgo Sound
to Yendegaia was proven correct when Swiss
explorer Carl Skottsberg (1911) reported it as
an ancient “Indian”route (Figure 1). US painter
Rockwell Kent (1924) followed this route in
December 1922 and along the way encountered
the remains of an Indigenous dwelling, cor-
roborating its use as a “traditional passage”
(Prieto et al. 2000).
Junius Bird (1938b) conducted the first sys-
tematic archaeological studies on the bay. On
the northeast shore, near Caleta 2 de Mayo vil-
lage, he excavated a rockshelter with a dense
shell midden almost 2.7 m deep; using the meth-
ods and criteria of that time, he identified a con-
tinuous occupational sequence. Bird (1938a)
also identified two cultural moments: an older
one in the lower strata that he attributed to the
“Shell-Knife Culture”and one in the upper strata,
which he called the “Pit-House Culture”and
linked to the Yagán culture.
In recent decades, the archaeological record
of the bay has grown as a result of the construc-
tion of a wharf and a new route connecting the
village with the island’s interior (Bustos 2007;
Constantinescu 2006; Reyes and San Román
2008). Our own investigations, conducted in
2016–2017, entailed systematic surveys along
the northeast shore of the bay, from the
Yendegaia River to the Beagle Channel
(Figure 2b). This work identified 117 archaeo-
logical sites: 62 remains of semi-subterranean
dwellings, 4 mounds, 46 middens, and 5 rock-
shelters. In one of these shelters (YEN117), we
found a panel with rock paintings whose location
and designs are significant to the archaeology of
the region.
Yendegaia Rockshelter and Its Paintings
The rock wall with paintings is situated on the
eastern side of the bay, some 3.5 km from the
present-day shoreline. It is one face of a boulder
that forms a shelter with a small rest area (12 ×
4 × 1 m), located on the first terrace 23 m asl
and above an extensive bogland found on the
riverbank (Figure 3). No cultural material was
observed on the surface of the archaeological
site YEN117. The rock paintings are very visible
and are placed on different planes of the rock
wall in a variety of orientations, ranging from
1 m to 2.5 m above the current ground level.
We recorded the paintings at the motif and
panel level using our standard methodology
(Gallardo 2009b; Gallardo et al. 2012). Even
though the paintings were very weathered,
D-Stretch software enabled us to identify several
motifs painted in red, some of which were
in sequence or were successive repetitions
(Figure 4). There are motifs based on dots—
three pairs, one case with four units, and another
with 20 dots (Figure 4a)—and motifs based on
strokes framed by parallel vertical lines: two
pairs and four elements in one case (Figure 4b).
There are also 10 stains (Figure 4b) concentrated
lower down on the panel (Table 1). All the motifs
at the site are geometric, with minimal elements
or units of dots (2–3 cm in diameter) or long lin-
ear strokes (ca. 12 cm in length) that are repli-
cated by horizontal translation (Washburn
1983). In other words, the motifs are produced
by a discontinuous stroke, which makes this
graphic solution very characteristic of the site
—and culturally related to other designs of the
region.
It is interesting to note that the placement of
some motifs shows interaction with the surface
of the support: thus, we see that a series of dots
forms a continuous winding line that cuts
4 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
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precisely over one of the natural horizontal wavy
lines formed by the layers of the rock (Figure 4a).
In contrast, a series of parallel vertical lines is
placed on a very flat portion of the support,
emphasizing the straightness of those strokes
(Figure 4b).
The Rock Art of Tierra del
Fuego-Patagonia at the Southern Tip of the
Americas
Since the first rock art studies were conducted in
the 1970s, the sites identified in Tierra del
Fuego-Patagonia have increased in number and
distribution (Bate 1970,1971; González et al.
2014; Jaillet et al. 2010; Legoupil and Prieto
1991; Massone 1982,1985; Muñoz et al. 2016;
Sepúlveda 2011). At numerous sites in Última
Esperanza and Pali Aike, Massone and col-
leagues carried out the first systematized study
of motif types and their quantitative distribution.
Given the importance and scope of this investi-
gation, we use his definitions and findings for
rock art sites and units. His typology is compre-
hensive and enables the comparative regional
approach proposed here. Massone (1982) identi-
fied (1) geometric motifs based on dots (a single
dot, an unorganized group of dots, a series of
dots in a line); (2) geometric motifs based on
strokes (one alone, two parallel lines, a series
of parallel strokes, divergent lines, irregular
strokes); (3) linear figures (classified as closed,
complex, or both by the author, including circu-
lar and quadrangular motifs, linear ones with
appendices, reticulated ones, and irregular linear
figures); and (4) stains of paint (paint added
Figure 2. Location of (a) Yendegaia Bay and (b) archaeological sites identified at the bay.
Gallardo et al. 5YENDEGAIA ROCKSHELTER
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intentionally to a panel with no defined shape;
Figure 5). We also distinguish “figurative”motifs
as either human or animal representations,
including negative and positive handprints
(only the latter corresponded to a fifth category
of Massone; Figures 5 and 6).
This comparative study includes rock art
localities in the Tierra del Fuego archipelago-
Beagle Channel and Cape Horn (territory tra-
ditionally occupied by the Yagán people),
Madre de Dios Island (territory traditionally
occupied by the Kawashkar people), and local-
ities on the mainland (the southern tip of Patago-
nia); Última Esperanza; and the volcanic field of
Pali Aike, where the canoe-faring people and the
Aonikenk lived in historic times.
Beagle Channel and Cape Horn: Picton 1 and
Martín González Calderón Shelter
At the Picton 1 shelter site (AP1), which is
located on the southwestern coast of the island
with the same name (Figure 1), Muñoz and col-
laborators (2016) recorded three motifs in red
paint. In their illustrations, at least two stains of
paint can also be observed (Table 1). The motifs
are exclusively linear figures organized along a
main line. In one case, the main line is horizon-
tal, and there are five parallel vertical strokes
emanating from it (or in horizontal transition).
In the lower segment, the authors indicate the
possible presence of an orange-hued stencil. In
the other two motifs, the axis is a straight vertical
line with shorter, oblique lines on either side,
which in one case are replicated at opposing
angles—forming a diamond shape; in the other,
the lines are replicated at the same angle, forming
a somewhat anthropomorphic shape. The authors
interpret both cases as human representations, in
comparison to other motifs painted at sites in the
Tierra del Fuego region.
At the Martín González Calderón rockshelter
(AMGC) located at Šapinij (Shapine) Island in
Ponsonby Sound (Figure 1), González and col-
leagues (2014) note the presence of anthropo-
morphic and zoomorphic paintings, a variety of
separate linear strokes of varying thicknesses
(linear figures), and areas covered in red paint
(stains; Table 1). According to these authors,
Figure 3. The rock wall where the rock paintings were found. (Color online)
6 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
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red is the principal color of paint used, although
they also mention some motifs in white, includ-
ing linear strokes that form a quadrangular figure
and a possible anthropomorph (closed or open
linear motifs). In both cases, most of the motifs
have been created through continuous graphic
solutions in which the stroke extends uninter-
ruptedly to form the figure.
Madre de Dios Island: Cueva del Pacífico
Jaillet and coworkers (2010), during their speleo-
logical exploration of a large limestone cavern on
Madre de Dios Island (IMD), discovered some
rock paintings. In the “Cueva del Pacífico,”so
named by its discoverers, 45 motifs were
recorded: 26 were in red paint, occupying the
upper part of the walls (from 4 m to 50 cm),
whereas the 19 remaining motifs were black
and were located lower down (no higher than
70 cm above the floor). The authors confirm
the preponderance of anthropomorphic represen-
tations (N= 11), with “fewer”geometric shapes
(no numbers provided), such as “sun wheels”
or “nets,”and two zoomorphic motifs identified
as marine mammals and some dates and letters,
which would be consistent with the site’s con-
tinuous occupation for some 4,000 years.
Based on these descriptions, closed and open lin-
ear figures seemed to recur most frequently.
However, our records of the site show that motifs
based on strokes and stains of paint are almost
equally prevalent (Table 1). Paintings in red pig-
ment are most notable in this repertoire, particu-
larly in their design and execution that follow the
norms seen at other sites. A significant number of
images in black wood charcoal suggest later
interventions within a different cultural frame-
work than that of the oldest images; therefore,
they are not considered in our analysis.
Whereas a vast variety of forms are displayed
in these representations, it is possible to identify
at least two modes of deploying strokes that pro-
duce different graphic solutions: continuous (the
stroke extends without interruption to form the
motif) and discontinuous (the figure is formed
from intermittent strokes). These solutions of
continuous/discontinuous strokes are indepen-
dent of the type of motif being produced: either
solution can be used to represent any type of
motif.
Última Esperanza: Cerro Benítez, Lago Sofía,
and Cueva de los Niños
The works of Laming-Emperaire (1959), Bate
(1970,1971), and Massone (1982,1985) provide
descriptions of rock art painted in the locality of
Última Esperanza, where red is the predominant
pigment color used. The Lago Sofía modality is
worth noting, because it offers motifs based on
simple dots or dots in more complex groupings;
strokes and linear motifs; and, in lesser quan-
tities, thickly traced schematic zoomorphic fig-
ures and “ostrich tracks.”Massone (1985) also
notes the existence of another modality, Cerro
Benítez, characterized by various types of strokes
and linear forms that occasionally form complex
motifs, as well as some anthropomorphic and
zoomorphic figures that are more schematic. A
date of 2870 ± 65 BP (uncalibrated) was
obtained from a stratum containing remains of
the rock face of the CB2 site with traces of red
colorant (Massone 1982:87).
On the western shore of Última Esperanza
Sound, there is a small rockshelter called
Figure 4. Rock paintings at YEN117: (a) motifs based on
dots; (b) motifs based on strokes (left) and stains (right).
Gallardo et al. 7YENDEGAIA ROCKSHELTER
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Cueva de los Niños (“cave of the children”; CN),
named for the remains of two infants found there.
The grave goods include shell bead necklaces,
fragments of sinews, feathers, painted leather,
wood, and the remains of pigment (Legoupil
and Prieto 1991; Legoupil et al. 2004; Sellier
1999). These colorants were also used on the
wall of the shelter, where extensive stains of
paint can be observed; some of those stains
were made up of “small droplets of paint”that
were created using a blowing technique (Legou-
pil and Prieto 1991:135). Although the morph-
ology of the motifs was not categorized, digital
processing of the photographs to enhance
Table 1. Types of Motifs Presents in Each Locality by Archaeological Site.
Types
Rock Art Locality
Archaeological
Site
Geometric Motif
Using Dots
Geometric Motif
Using Lines
Linear
Figure Stain Figurative Total
Beagle Channel and
Cape Horn
YEN117 5 3 0 10 0 18
AP1 0 0 2 2 1 5
AMGC 1 0 3 4 2 10
Madre de Dios Island IMD 3 16 16 10 2 47
Última Esperanza CB2 2 14 1 3 0 20
CB3 1 1 0 1 0 3
CB4 7 0 1 0 0 8
CB5 10 5 3 7 0 25
LS2 11 6 0 18 0 35
LS3 5 0 0 2 0 7
LS4 2 0 0 2 0 4
CN 0 3 1 10 0 14
Pali Aike LTI2 0 6 2 3 0 11
LTI3 0 1 0 0 0 1
LST1 2 37 14 12 0 65
RA2 0 2 0 0 0 2
RA3 0 16 1 2 1 20
CS2 0 7 3 2 0 12
CS3 1 6 0 3 0 10
LTB1 3 4 0 8 0 15
Río Chico RC01 0 8 0 2 0 10
RC02 0 21 1 34 0 56
RC03 0 4 0 2 0 6
RC04 0 6 2 4 0 12
RC05 0 21 6 20 0 47
RC06 0 3 1 0 0 4
RC07 0 1 2 0 0 3
RC08 1 5 6 5 2 19
RC09 0 0 1 0 0 1
RC10 0 7 0 2 0 9
RC11 1 6 0 7 0 14
RC12 1 8 0 18 0 27
RC13 8 43 14 28 2 95
RC14 0 1 2 1 0 4
RC15 0 0 1 1 0 2
RC16 2 2 9 2 0 15
RC17 0 0 0 4 1 5
RC18 0 1 1 0 0 2
RC19 1 3 0 0 0 4
RC20 0 0 0 1 0 1
8 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
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contrast revealed some dots and lines that could
have comprised discrete forms, now deteriorated.
This funerary context was dated to 250 ± 50 BP
(Legoupil et al. 2004:226). Our analysis con-
siders information from the four sites of Cerro
Benítez (CB) and three at Lago Sofía (LS) pub-
lished by Massone (1982), along with evidence
from Cueva de los Niños (Table 1). In summary,
in the Última Esperanza sector, the most preva-
lent motifs are those based on dots, strokes, and
other linear figures that are composed without
the use of symmetry (Gallardo 2009b).
Pali Aike Volcanic Field: Pali Aike and Río
Chico
Pali Aike was studied by Massone (1981,1982,
1985) and collaborators. The sites there are
located primarily in rockshelters that served as
resting places: there are two sites at Laguna
Timone (LTI), one in Laguna Sota (LST), two
from Rose Aike (RA), two from Cañadón Seco
(CS), and one in Laguna Los Tábanos (LTB;
Table 1). Paintings are always red and rarely
combined with yellow. The motifs are mainly
parallel traces in different sequences or that
form geometric figures. Finally, intentional
stains are frequent.
Massone (1982) relates this rock art to the Río
Chico modality defined by Bate (1970,1971)
based on the archaeological sites of Ush Aike
(or Oosin Aike), Cueva Fell and Río Chico 1,
2, 5, 0, and Cañadón Seco 1 in this area—as
well as Morro Chico and Cañadón La Leona
found between the localities of Río Chico and
Última Esperanza. Red is also the most used
paint color, but combinations of black and
white also can be found (Sepúlveda 2011).
This style modality is principally defined by se-
ries of lines varying in number and length,
drawn in parallel or intersected by perpendicular
lines, as well as some circles or squares with
variated appendixes. There are also exceptional
cases of schematic anthropomorphic or zoo-
morphic figures and negative handprints. In
short, these are simple geometric motifs with
both regular and irregular shapes, with a predom-
inance of motifs composed through the combin-
ation of simple elements based on short and long
Figure 5. Examples of the categories used for the analysis: (a) lineal figure (top) and geometric motif using dots (bottom;
CB5, Última Esperanza); (b) geometric motif using lines (RC08, Río Chico); (c) paint stains (CN, Última Esperanza);
and (d) figurative motifs (RC17, Río Chico).
Gallardo et al. 9YENDEGAIA ROCKSHELTER
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strokes. These elements were arranged symmet-
rically, with movements that include reflection,
one-dimensional translation, and two-
dimensional rotation, with the last type of move-
ment being most common (Gallardo 2009b).
For this analysis we consider our own records
(Gallardo 2009b; Sepúlveda 2011) from 20 rock
art sites in and around Río Chico (RC01-20),
including Fell Cave (RC11), and the data pub-
lished by Massone (1982) for the Chilean side
of the Pali Aike Volcanic Field mentioned earlier
(Table 1). A reconnaissance conducted by Bate
(1971:35) in one of the shelters with cave paint-
ings in Río Chico (RC08 in our nomenclature)
found a deposit that included stone instruments,
characteristic of Period IV (Bird 1946); guanaco
Figure 6. Examples of anthropomorphic figures: (a) AMGC, Beagle Channel, and Cape Horn (González et al. 2014:
Figure 4); (b) Madre de Dios Island; (c) RC08, Río Chico; and (d) Madre de Dios Island.
10 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2022.47 Published online by Cambridge University Press
bones; and a piece of red pigment associated with
a stove that was dated to 2080 ± 80 years BP. A
date that may represent the beginning of the
rock art chronology, given the continuity of the
settlement pattern, should for now be extended
to at least Period V or the early historic period.
Yendegaia: Rock Art and Social
Interaction in Tierra del Fuego-Patagonia
Handprints, guanacos, hunting scenes, footprints,
and geometric figures are all frequent rock art
motifs in central and south-central Patagonia
(e.g., Acevedo and Fiore 2020;Gradin1988;Gui-
chon and Re 2020; Muñoz et al. 2021). However,
these designs decline in variety and frequency as
one moves across Patagonia and toward the Strait
of Magellan. The southernmost records are found
around Última Esperanza, near Torres del Paine,
andinthePaliAikeVolcanicField(Bate1970,
1971;Charlin2014;Gómez1993; Hernández
et al. 1999; Manzi and Carballo 2012; Massone
1982,1985; Muñoz 2020). These rock art sites,
which are distributed from the southern tip of the
continent to Cape Horn in the south and Madre
de Dios Island in the west, display a spatial distribu-
tion that reveals differences between the territories
of canoe-faring and land-based hunter-gatherers.
A simple numerical and percentage examina-
tion of the motifs in these Patagonian territories
indicates the presence of a narrow corpus of
shared visual solutions, with differing frequen-
cies that distinguish one locality from another
(Table 2). These differences are evident in the
percentage distribution of motif types, especially
dots in the archipelago and strokes on the main-
land; yet the procedures used to create structural
symmetry such as translation, which gives rise
to sequences of motifs, are the same across all
localities (see Gallardo 2009b). Another trend
is the preferential use of red compared to other
colors. In rock art expressions, the relative scar-
city of figurative motifs (those with an identifi-
able point of reference) is another common
feature. It is also noteworthy that designs with
human attributes display tremendous formal
similarity among sites from the Beagle Channel
to Madre de Dios Island (Figure 6). The spread-
ing of paint-forming stains covering large areas
of the rocky walls, as observed at Cueva de
Los Niños (Legoupil and Prieto 1991), is also
common. This practice may have had more than
a visual purpose: although all rock art operates
on the visual plane, it also operates in relation to
the place where the art is situated, so that the cre-
ator engages in a dialoguewith both the paint and
the rock support. These large stains of paint, and
the exceptional expenditure they represent, could
be classed broadly as acts of offering, like the
practices of painting the bodies of the dead and
their tombs (e.g., Prieto et al. 2020).
Given the quantitative similarities and differ-
ences observed (Tables 1 and 2), we applied a
comparative analysis among the localities studied.
We analyzed cluster groups (using Euclidean dis-
tances) to measure the geometric distance
between cases in a multidimensional space (single
linkage). However, because each locality dis-
played singularities influenced by the distribution
of rock art at each site, we grouped them in rela-
tion to territories associated with the Indigenous
peoples of Patagonia-Tierra del Fuego: Maga-
llanes archipelago (Madre de Dios Island and
Última Esperanza), the ancestral territory of the
Kawashkar people; the Pali Aike volcanic field
(Río Chico and Pali Aike), the ancestral territory
of the Aonikenk people; and the Beagle Channel-
Cape Horn, the traditional territory of the Yagán
people (Table 3;Figures 1 and 7).
Despite their broad geographic range, our
results reinforce trends observed previously, sug-
gesting that there are differences between the
rock art associated with marine hunter-gatherers
and that associated with land-based hunter-
gatherers (Charlin and Borrero 2012; Massone
1982,1985; Muñoz 2020). Even though previ-
ous efforts did not include information on the
rock art of the Tierra del Fuego archipelago, it
is now evident that the rock art imageryof the ter-
ritories belonging to the canoe-faring people
(home to both the Kawashkar and Yagán peo-
ples) also exhibits differences from both types
of hunter-gatherers. Certainly, it is likely that
the distance between the Magallanes Archipel-
ago and the Beagle Channel-Cape Horn areas
would have led to distinctions between the two
traditions (Muñoz 2020:173).
Despite the quantitative differences, the similar-
ities in motifs, their graphic solutions, limited va-
riety, and the predominant use of the color red
Gallardo et al. 11YENDEGAIA ROCKSHELTER
https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2022.47 Published online by Cambridge University Press
reveal flows of visual information in a vast spatial
scale, which is consistent with the widespread
use of seagoing vessels among all the agents and
the regular circulation of goods, ideas, and people
over long distances. The results of this analysis
also suggest that the rock art produced in the terri-
tory of the land-based hunter-gatherers of Pali Aike
would not have been implicated in the same inter-
actions established between canoe-faring peoples.
Visual Practices and Pigment Uses in
Tierra del Fuego-Patagonia
The production and circulation of visual mate-
rial culture by the Indigenous peoples of Tierra
del Fuego go back to early times, as evidenced
by portable bone art dated to at least as early
as 6400 BP (e.g., the Túnel I and Imiwaia
I sites in the Beagle Channel region; Fiore
2011). The corpus of decorative designs on
portable bone art is strictly geometric and
reveals the use of one or more basic elements,
sometimes in specific combinations: straight
or curved lines, curved and straight-lined fig-
ures, and series of dots and dashes arranged in
a line or in groups (Fiore 2011). By combining
these basic elements, their creators crafted
numerous designs that display a wide variability
and were used in the decoration of instrumental
artifacts, such as harpoon points or staffs, as
well as unworked bone pieces. In contrast, the
decoration on ornamental beads focused on
the use of parallel dashes in series and on
parallel straight lines in series that encircled
the perimeter of the pieces to form highly stan-
dardized designs. In contrast to the harpoon
designs that were mostly produced from 6400
BP to approximately 4000 BP, these bead
designs were produced throughout the archaeo-
logical sequence associated with the
fishing-hunting-gathering peoples of the Beagle
Channel (6400 BP to the nineteenth century), as
well as on the neighboring island and mainland
regions (Fiore 2006,2020). This catalog of dec-
orative designs is virtually the same as the rock
art repertoire reported in this work.
Documentary evidence also exists on the
production and use of body paint among the
Kawashkar people from the sixteenth century
onward, among the Selk’nam from the sixteenth
century onward, and among the Yagán from the
seventeenth century onward (Fiore 2002,2004,
2005). In the case of the Yagán, whose tradi-
tional territory includes the zone of Yendegaia,
these painted designs used one or more types
of decorative elements, including dashes, dots,
lines, bands, “patches”of color (irregular
shapes), rows of consecutive dashes, rows of
Table 3. Types of Rock Art Motifs, Grouped by Traditional Cultural Territories.
Territory
Traditional
Culture
Geometric Motif
Using Dots
Geometric Motif
Using Lines Linear Figure Stain Figurative
Magellan Archipelago Kawashkar 42 45 22 53 2
Pali Aike Volcanic Field Aonikenk 20 219 66 161 6
Beagle Channel and Cape Horn Yagán 6 3 5 16 3
Table 2. Frequency of Motif Types for Each Locality Analyzed.
Rock Art Locality
Geometric Motif
Using Dots
Geometric Motif
Using Lines Linear Figure Stain Figurative Total
N(%) N(%) N(%) N(%) N(%) N(%)
Beagle Channel
and Cape Horn (N=3)
6 (18.18) 3 (9.09) 5 (15.15) 16 (48.48) 3 (9.09) 33 (100)
Madre de Dios Island (N= 1) 3 (4.76) 16 (30.16) 16 (41.27) 10 (20.63) 2 (3.17) 47 (100)
Última Esperanza (N= 8) 37 (31.90) 29 (25.009) 7 (6.02) 43 (37.07) 0 (0.00) 116 (100)
Pali Aike (N= 8) 6 (4.17) 79 (41.67) 20 (13.69) 30 (38.99) 1 (1.49) 136 (100)
Río Chico (N= 20) 14 (4.41) 140 (58.09) 46 (14.71) 131 (22.02) 5 (0.74) 336 (100)
12 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
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parallel lines, and rows of dots (Fiore 2005).
Members of Yagán society used body paint in
a variety of contexts: in everyday situations
(e.g., as expressions of mood, for visitors, for
crossing channels, for collecting eggs, for recov-
ering from illness, etc.); in special situations
(e.g., at menarche, weddings, for mourning, by
shamans, etc.); and in initiation ceremonies
(chiéjaus, a male and female initiation ceremony,
and kina, the male initiation ceremony; Fiore
2005,2020;Figure 8a). Pigments were also
applied to harpoons, grinding stones, paddles,
Figure 7. Cluster analysis on rock art paintings and groups from the Tierra del Fuego-Patagonia region.
Figure 8. Examples of Yagán decoration: (a) two Yagan women, Clara (left) and Anita (right), wearing facial paintings
designed with parallel rows of dots and straight lines (identification of their names provided by the team of Museo
Antropológico Martin Gusinde and Comunidad Yagán de Bahía Mejillones [Chile]; photo by M. Gusinde, 1922;
copy held at the ARC-FOT-AIA [Archivo Fotográfico de Imágenes Etnográficas de Fuego-Patagonia, Asociación de
Investigaciones Antropológicas, Buenos Aires, Argentina]); (b) selection of patterns of painted designs taken from
the frame of a ceremonial lodge (from Lothrop 1928:Plate IX). Note the similarity of the decorative elements used
with those used in the rock art designs found at Yendegaia. (Color online)
Gallardo et al. 13YENDEGAIA ROCKSHELTER
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hunting bows, and even formed designs in cere-
monial lodges (Hyades and Deniker 1891;
Lothrop 1928;Figure 8b).
This evidence leads us to suggest that, in the
production of these varied types of art, there
were at least two visual codes operating at differ-
ent times in the history of these fisher-hunter-
gatherers of southern Tierra del Fuego. Although
these visual codes were deployed in very differ-
ent media—artifacts and human bodies—it is
essential to note that in both media the designs
were structured around combinations of simple
geometric elements: dashes, lines, dots, and sim-
ple figures—with the first three of these coincid-
ing with design elements also observed in the
rock paintings found at Yendegaia.
Furthermore, archaeology in the region also
offers information about how different hues of
red pigment—along with yellow andblack in dif-
ferent contexts—were produced from similar raw
materials. An in situ analysis of rock paintings on
Madre de Dios Island indicates the use of iron
oxide and charcoal (Jaillet et al. 2010; Maire
et al. 2009). Similar pigments have also been dis-
covered from early dates at the Tunel I, Shama-
kush I, and Imiwaia I sites in Tierra del Fuego
and at the Offing 2 site on Dawson Island in
the Strait of Magellan. These come from layers
dated between 6200 and 154 BP, demonstrating
that the Indigenous inhabitants of this area had
a long tradition of managing mineral colorants
and organic binders in producing paints (Fiore
et al. 2008; Sepúlveda et al. 2022). In this
sense, the information confirms the existence of
paint production techniques that serve as addi-
tional evidence for the presence of painted rock
art production technology. They show that knowl-
edge and practices for managing color were
available early in the region and were shared in
different contexts by these canoe-faring groups.
Conclusion
The new discovery of rock art in the south of Isla
Grande in Tierra del Fuego and its links with
rock art from the Beagle Channel–Cape Horn
region enabled us to undertake this comparative
exploration of these visual expressions of south-
ernmost Patagonia. Although the chronology of
rock art at the southern tip of the Americas is
still a work in progress (Brook et al. 2018;
Muñoz 2020; Sepúlveda 2011), the close simi-
larities established in this limited graphic corpus
suggest that information was flowing primarily
among the canoe-faring peoples, who probably
left their rock testimonials after what Bird
(1946) has named Period IV, between approxi-
mately 4500 and 900 BP (Massone 1981). Fur-
thermore, the numerous rock art sites that
postdate 2000 BP in the Pali Aike Volcanic
Field and the corresponding stylistic similarities
with sites found elsewhere in the region point to
the relative contemporaneity of the rock art local-
ities included in this study (e.g., Bate 1978–
1979; Gallardo 2009b; Laming-Emperaire
1959; Massone 1981). Although it is not possible
to specify the chronology of the paintings we
presented in this article, the available informa-
tion indicates that they were being produced
until the eighteenth century: a time when paint
thrown on the rocky support may have been
more common than the production of motifs, as
in Cueva de los Niños. It is premature to associ-
ate stylistic patterns with temporal value, how-
ever; given the few iconographic variations and
cave practices in Fuego-Patagonia, we suggest
that these flows of visual information were of
importance until the early historic period.
The flows of rock art information revealed
here are also consistent with the visual informa-
tion recorded on other supports, such as bone
artifacts, ceremonial lodges, and body painting.
Social interactions among the peoples of south-
ern Patagonia were mediated by a diverse series
of visual cultural strategies. For example, a
brief record left by Duplessis (2003), written in
the late seventeenth century, describes an incur-
sion into the Jerónimo Channel (between Riesco
Island and the Brunswick Peninsula), during
which a group of naval officers were amazed to
see a rocky wall painted entirely in white, near
a hut made of fine skins, which contained a
deceased child. This action at the level of the vis-
ible and the social was likely an expression of
mourning that paid homage to an untimely death.
Social interactions were not foreign to those
who inhabited Tierra del Fuego Island and the
surrounding archipelago; indeed, historic and
ethnographic sources confirm their normal and
regular occurrences (e.g., Cooper 1917). This
14 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
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environment of social interaction would have
involved intercultural relations that would also
have fostered the circulation of technologies
and goods, such as green obsidian, iron pyrite
for fire starting, and marine and terrestrial
resources (e.g., Borrero et al. 2011; Fiore 2006;
Gallardo et al. 2018; Morello et al. 2015).
There is little doubt that the rock art of the south-
ern Patagonia Archipelago and the nearby main-
land, with their rugged, windswept lands lashed
by rain and snow, encouraged the forging of
intercultural social bonds that—based on the evi-
dence of contact between territories—allow us to
infer an aspiration for cooperation rather than
competition. Creating a network of social com-
plementarity in which social information flowed
probably made it possible to reduce survival
risks associated with low-population density
groups that were separated by long distances.
Acknowledgments. We thank those who enabled and sup-
ported our field study at Yendegaia: Ernesto Davis Seguic,
investigator, and Paola Acuña Gómez, executive director
of Fundación CEQUA; Francisco Cornejo Alarcón, chief
unit engineer, MOP-CMT, Dirección de Vialidad MOP;
and Israel Pardo Román, Dirección Regional de Vialidad,
Magallanes, and the Chilean Antarctic Region. Special
gratitude to Luna Marticorena Galleguillos, Museo Antro-
pológico Martin Gusinde, and Comunidad Yagán de
Bahía Mejillones. We also thank Joan Donaghey for the
English translation and Christina Torres-Rouff for proof-
reading. Finally, we would like to thank the anonymous
reviewers for their constructive suggestions, which helped
improve the article. Except where otherwise noted, all fig-
ures are courtesy of the authors.
Data Availability Statement. All data in this article are avail-
able upon request from the corresponding author.
Competing Interests. The authors declare none.
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Submitted March 21, 2021; Revised June 10, 2021; Accepted
May 17, 2022
18 LATIN AMERICAN ANTIQUITY
https://doi.org/10.1017/laq.2022.47 Published online by Cambridge University Press