Nuevos hallazgos en la cuenca del Río Salado del Norte:

el sitio arqueológico Arroyo Aululú 1 (Esperanza, departamento las Colonias, Santa Fe, Argentina)

Abstract

In the first half of the 20th Century, a number of scholars made archeological findings at different spots in the Salado del Norte River Basin, specifically in the area close to the confluence of this river with its tributary, the Cululú Stream. In the 1980s, Carlos Ceruti systematized the archaeological information from the Santa Fe Province, and postulated that this part of the Salado Basin had been inhabited by the so-called Esperanza Cultural Entity, during the last arid stage of the Holocene (3000 to 1500-1000 a.p.). After more than twenty years without field archaeological research in the area, recent studies have allowed us to find new evidence about the human occupation of this region. In this paper, we present a chronologically ordered account of previous archaeological research in the area and communicate the first results derived from the study of pottery and faunal remains recently recovered at the Arroyo Cululú 1 site (AC1). Albeit preliminary, the information presented in this paper is relevant for the archaeology of central Santa Fe, an area much less investigated than other near ones like the Paraná River floodplain.