Patagonia : natural history, prehistory and ethnography at the uttermost end of the earth /

The geographical focus of this volume is mainly on "Fuego-Patagonia," the area of the southern cone south of 490 S latitude; the anthropological focus is on two groups of "canoe Indians"--the Alacaluf/Kaweskar and the Yahgun/Yamana--and three groups of "foot Indians"-- the Ona/Selk'nam, the Haush/Nlannekenk, and the Southern Tehuelche/Aonikenk. Developed to accompany an exhibition on Patagonia, the volume deals with "the elusive history of peoples fleetingly glimpsed through fragmentary archaeological, textual, and pictorial sources." The first chapter reviews the Late Pleistocene/Holocene environmental history; the next three chapters summarize the material cultural of the first immigrants, expansion, and the recent prehistoric inhabitants of the area. Final chapters discuss the history of contact and some components of the social organization of the inhabitants recovered from ethnohistorical studies; the concluding chapter considers the quillango (guanaco-skin cloaks) as one of the significant artifacts of the exhibit. Chapters by Chapman on the great ceremonies of the Ona (foot) and Yahgun (canoe) groups, and by Borrero on the origins of the ethnographic subsistence patterns, are particularly strong. This volume is the single most encompassing work on Fuego-Patagonia in English and provides an excellent introduction to the first inhabitants. It is expansively illustrated (118 regional and ethnographic photos and drawings), and it has a good index and bibliography. All levels. D. L. Browman Washington University