ABSTRACT
Only recently has the process of the human peopling of Patagonia been modelled as a dynamic one in space as well as in time (Cocilovo 1981, Cocilovo & Guichón 1984). Previous models considered the space of Patagonia as being occupied by several different, geographically localized populations (Imbelloni 1938, Bórmida 1953-1954), but they were framed in a Kulturkreis line of research, with all of its postulates of differential antiquity according to the geographical position of the ‘human waves’, and time depth was not dealt with in a satisfactory way. Several anomalies were noted in the osteological record, and the incapacity of those models to account for them was soon obvious (Cocilovo 1981). It was recently observed that they cannot be maintained as an explanation for the process of peopling of Patagonia. Instead, it is now considered that minimal variations in selected variables show a far more complicated process underlying the ethnographic variability observed in the 19th century.
