Marcelo R Sánchez-Villagra
Biographic Data
| ID | 667357 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Marcelo R Sánchez-Villagra |
| GIVEN NAMES | Marcelo R |
| FAMILY NAME | Sánchez-Villagra |
| SIGNATURE | SÁNCHEZ-VILLAGRA M R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Zurich |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-7587-3648 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 10 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 15 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Late Holocene Maize Diversity and Cultural Remains from the Northern Neotropics
In the northern neotropics, given poor preservation of macro-fossils and funding/research biases, our understanding of ancient cultures’ dynamics is limited. Here, we document the botanical and cultural remains at an early ceramic archaeological site, Cueva La Capilla, northeast of the Venezuelan Andes, which contains funerary remains linked to the Tocuyanoid ceramic tradition, as well as maize rachises. We employ a multidisciplinary approach to …
Ancient Proboscidean-Ivory Artifacts from Northwestern Venezuela
For thousands of years, ivory has been used as a raw material to produce utensils and other tools in many regions of the world. Ivory artifacts have been recovered from Late Pleistocene archaeological sites throughout North America and South America. We report two proboscidean ivory artifacts found in northwestern Venezuela. These artifacts were likely used as tools, and their morphology is unique with no similarities to other artifacts reported …
Digitising the past, preserving the future
In 1903, the Berlin Museum of Ethnology commissioned Alfredo Jahn Hartman to conduct archaeological excavations in the Lake Valencia basin in Venezuela. Jahn explored two sites, Camburito and El Zamuro, where he unearthed pre-Columbian artefacts and human burials and subsequently sent them to Berlin. More than a century later, we digitised this collection following a detailed protocol to obtain scans with submillimetre accuracy reproducing the ge…
A human skeleton from Última Esperanza, South-West Patagonia, Chile
Despite over 130 years of systematic investigation, only a few ancient human skeletons have been recovered in southern Patagonia. These remains, dating to the Middle and Late Holocene, are typically found as isolated individuals or in small burial groups. In this paper, we present a multidisciplinary analysis of a human skeleton belonging to an elderly female discovered in the late 19th century in Mylodon Cave, Última Esperanza, southern Chile. T…
A global database on blowguns with links to geography and language
The blowgun is a weapon that employs the force of breath for expelling a projectile and has been traditionally used for hunting and (occasionally) war. The use of blowguns extends to ancient times and is advantageous in dense-forest areas of South America and South East Asia. A classification system of blowgun types introduced in 1948 for South America is extended here. We assembled a global database that includes collection data and ethnographic…
A morphological, morphometric and geochemical characterization of the El Jobo projectile points - diversity and significance in early human populations across the Americas
The El Jobo projectile points represent a distinctive design innovation of Late Pleistocene Neotropical human groups. This technology, characterized by its fusiform/lanceolate shape, has been recorded mainly in northwestern Venezuela in a variety of geographical areas and in association with megafauna killing/butchering sites. To characterize it, address its significance, and analyse possible continental relationships, four consecutive approaches…
On the Lack of Domestic Dogs in Pre-Columbian Lowland Amazonia and Their Deep History of Entanglements With Humans in South America
Data from archaeology, ethnography, and ethnohistory document entanglements of dogs among South American Indigenous societies during pre-Columbian and colonial times. The prolific presence and uses of dogs in the Central Andes and in parts of the Paraná Basin, Patagonia, and Circum-Caribbean regions contrast with the conspicuous lack of records in pre-Columbian lowland Neotropics. The ontological perspective cannot explain this pattern. The dog a…
The Process of Animal Domestication
Across the globe and at different times in the past millennia, the evolutionary history of domesticated animals has been greatly affected by the myriad, complex, and diverse interactions humans have had with the animals closest to them. This book presents a broad synthesis of this subject, from the rich biology behind the initial stages of domestication to how the creation of breeds reflects cultural and societal transformations that have impacte…
The Process of Animal Domestication
Claude Lévi-Strauss as a humanist forerunner of cultural macroevolution studies
Cross-cultural studies of humans using methods developed in evolutionary biology and comparative linguistics are flourishing. ‘Cultural macroevolution’ has great potential to address fundamental questions of cultural transformation and human history. However, this field is poorly integrated with core cultural anthropology, although both aim in part at addressing similar issues. Claude Lévi-Strauss established a comparative approach searching for …
Biological and cultural history of domesticated dogs in the Americas
Domestication had a dramatic influence on the cultural evolution of human histories, and on the biological evolution of domesticated species. Domestic dogs occurred earlier in the Americas than other domesticated animals. Older records in the continent come from North America, dated 11 000-8400 years BP, and in the Andes from 5600-5000 years BP. In order to present an overview of human-dog interaction in the Americas, and to identify gaps in know…
Cultural macroevolution of musical instruments in South America
Musical instruments provide material evidence to study the diversity and technical innovation of music in space and time. We employed a cultural evolutionary perspective to analyse organological data and their relation to language groups and population history in South America, a unique and complex geographic area for human evolution. The ethnological and archaeological native musical instrument record, documented in three newly assembled contine…
Panpipes as units of cultural analysis and dispersal
The panpipe is a musical instrument composed of end-blown tubes of different lengths tied together. They can be traced back to the Neolithic, and they have been found at prehistoric sites in China, Europe and South America. Panpipes display substantial variation in space and time across functional and aesthetic dimensions. Finding similarities in panpipes that belong to distant human groups poses a challenge to cultural evolution: while some have…
Evaluating the self‐domestication hypothesis of human evolution
"Self-domestication" has been invoked to understand important aspects of human evolution, integrating physiological, behavioral, and morphological information in a novel way. It proposes that selection for reduced aggression on animals undergoing domestication provides a model for selection favoring prosocial behaviors in humans and for a set of seemingly independent features, which arose as a result of developmental correlation. We review the hi…
Relation of Intergroup Variation in Allogrooming to Group Social Structure and Ectoparasite Loads in Red Howlers (Alouatta seniculus)
Relation of Intergroup Variation in Allogrooming to Group Social Structure and Ectoparasite Loads in Red Howlers (Alouatta seniculus)
Panpipes as units of cultural analysis and dispersal
The panpipe is a musical instrument composed of end-blown tubes of different lengths tied together. They can be traced back to the Neolithic, and they have been found at prehistoric sites in China, Europe and South America. Panpipes display substantial variation in space and time across functional and aesthetic dimensions. Finding similarities in panpipes that belong to distant human groups poses a challenge to cultural evolution: while some have…
The Process of Animal Domestication
Biological and cultural history of domesticated dogs in the Americas
Domestication had a dramatic influence on the cultural evolution of human histories, and on the biological evolution of domesticated species. Domestic dogs occurred earlier in the Americas than other domesticated animals. Older records in the continent come from North America, dated 11 000-8400 years BP, and in the Andes from 5600-5000 years BP. In order to present an overview of human-dog interaction in the Americas, and to identify gaps in know…
Relation of Intergroup Variation in Allogrooming to Group Social Structure and Ectoparasite Loads in Red Howlers (Alouatta seniculus)
Evaluating the self‐domestication hypothesis of human evolution
"Self-domestication" has been invoked to understand important aspects of human evolution, integrating physiological, behavioral, and morphological information in a novel way. It proposes that selection for reduced aggression on animals undergoing domestication provides a model for selection favoring prosocial behaviors in humans and for a set of seemingly independent features, which arose as a result of developmental correlation. We review the hi…
Panpipes as units of cultural analysis and dispersal
The panpipe is a musical instrument composed of end-blown tubes of different lengths tied together. They can be traced back to the Neolithic, and they have been found at prehistoric sites in China, Europe and South America. Panpipes display substantial variation in space and time across functional and aesthetic dimensions. Finding similarities in panpipes that belong to distant human groups poses a challenge to cultural evolution: while some have…
Cultural macroevolution of musical instruments in South America
Musical instruments provide material evidence to study the diversity and technical innovation of music in space and time. We employed a cultural evolutionary perspective to analyse organological data and their relation to language groups and population history in South America, a unique and complex geographic area for human evolution. The ethnological and archaeological native musical instrument record, documented in three newly assembled contine…
The Process of Animal Domestication
Across the globe and at different times in the past millennia, the evolutionary history of domesticated animals has been greatly affected by the myriad, complex, and diverse interactions humans have had with the animals closest to them. This book presents a broad synthesis of this subject, from the rich biology behind the initial stages of domestication to how the creation of breeds reflects cultural and societal transformations that have impacte…
The Process of Animal Domestication
Claude Lévi-Strauss as a humanist forerunner of cultural macroevolution studies
Cross-cultural studies of humans using methods developed in evolutionary biology and comparative linguistics are flourishing. ‘Cultural macroevolution’ has great potential to address fundamental questions of cultural transformation and human history. However, this field is poorly integrated with core cultural anthropology, although both aim in part at addressing similar issues. Claude Lévi-Strauss established a comparative approach searching for …
Biological and cultural history of domesticated dogs in the Americas
Domestication had a dramatic influence on the cultural evolution of human histories, and on the biological evolution of domesticated species. Domestic dogs occurred earlier in the Americas than other domesticated animals. Older records in the continent come from North America, dated 11 000-8400 years BP, and in the Andes from 5600-5000 years BP. In order to present an overview of human-dog interaction in the Americas, and to identify gaps in know…
Ancient Proboscidean-Ivory Artifacts from Northwestern Venezuela
For thousands of years, ivory has been used as a raw material to produce utensils and other tools in many regions of the world. Ivory artifacts have been recovered from Late Pleistocene archaeological sites throughout North America and South America. We report two proboscidean ivory artifacts found in northwestern Venezuela. These artifacts were likely used as tools, and their morphology is unique with no similarities to other artifacts reported …
Digitising the past, preserving the future
In 1903, the Berlin Museum of Ethnology commissioned Alfredo Jahn Hartman to conduct archaeological excavations in the Lake Valencia basin in Venezuela. Jahn explored two sites, Camburito and El Zamuro, where he unearthed pre-Columbian artefacts and human burials and subsequently sent them to Berlin. More than a century later, we digitised this collection following a detailed protocol to obtain scans with submillimetre accuracy reproducing the ge…
A human skeleton from Última Esperanza, South-West Patagonia, Chile
Despite over 130 years of systematic investigation, only a few ancient human skeletons have been recovered in southern Patagonia. These remains, dating to the Middle and Late Holocene, are typically found as isolated individuals or in small burial groups. In this paper, we present a multidisciplinary analysis of a human skeleton belonging to an elderly female discovered in the late 19th century in Mylodon Cave, Última Esperanza, southern Chile. T…
A global database on blowguns with links to geography and language
The blowgun is a weapon that employs the force of breath for expelling a projectile and has been traditionally used for hunting and (occasionally) war. The use of blowguns extends to ancient times and is advantageous in dense-forest areas of South America and South East Asia. A classification system of blowgun types introduced in 1948 for South America is extended here. We assembled a global database that includes collection data and ethnographic…
A morphological, morphometric and geochemical characterization of the El Jobo projectile points - diversity and significance in early human populations across the Americas
The El Jobo projectile points represent a distinctive design innovation of Late Pleistocene Neotropical human groups. This technology, characterized by its fusiform/lanceolate shape, has been recorded mainly in northwestern Venezuela in a variety of geographical areas and in association with megafauna killing/butchering sites. To characterize it, address its significance, and analyse possible continental relationships, four consecutive approaches…
On the Lack of Domestic Dogs in Pre-Columbian Lowland Amazonia and Their Deep History of Entanglements With Humans in South America
Data from archaeology, ethnography, and ethnohistory document entanglements of dogs among South American Indigenous societies during pre-Columbian and colonial times. The prolific presence and uses of dogs in the Central Andes and in parts of the Paraná Basin, Patagonia, and Circum-Caribbean regions contrast with the conspicuous lack of records in pre-Columbian lowland Neotropics. The ontological perspective cannot explain this pattern. The dog a…
Late Holocene Maize Diversity and Cultural Remains from the Northern Neotropics
In the northern neotropics, given poor preservation of macro-fossils and funding/research biases, our understanding of ancient cultures’ dynamics is limited. Here, we document the botanical and cultural remains at an early ceramic archaeological site, Cueva La Capilla, northeast of the Venezuelan Andes, which contains funerary remains linked to the Tocuyanoid ceramic tradition, as well as maize rachises. We employ a multidisciplinary approach to …
Geography (10 works) · Biology (9 works) · Archaeology (7 works) · Ecology (6 works) · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology (5 works) · Geology (4 works) · Archaeology and ancient environmental studies (3 works) · Computer Science (3 works) · Demography (3 works) · Domestication (3 works)