Food and tools from the sea: the relevance of marine tetrapod fauna in cultural practices of the sambaqui builders from southern Brazil

Anthropogenic modifications on faunal remains, such as cut marks, thermal alterations such as burning and calcination, and artifact production, constitute key indicators of cultural practices in past societies. However, in the archaeological record of sambaqui sites (shell mounds), evidence of such modifications remains relatively scarce or insufficiently documented, particularly regarding tetrapod remains. This study adopts a multi-method analytical approach to examine anthropic alterations in tetrapod bones from sambaqui contexts, describing the most comprehensive dataset of its kind to date. We analyzed 3,682 remains, 1,837 of which contained anthropic modifications. The zooarchaeological assemblage predominantly consists of marine taxa (including Mysticeti indet., Cetacea indet., Otariidae indet., Arctocephalus australis, and Spheniscus magellanicus). While terrestrial vertebrates were also exploited for tool production, the distribution and frequency of cut marks, biomass estimations, and the presence of bone artifacts indicate that marine tetrapods played significant functional and symbolic roles in the lifeways of sambaqui-building societies.