ARTICLE IN PRESS

Quaternary International 142143 (2006) 247248

Forum

A comment on volume 132 of Quaternary International

M. Iriondo
CONICET C.C:487 (3100) Parana. Argentina

I nd necessary to mark a signicant error which

appeared in the Preface of Volume 132 of Quaternary
International, written by Zarate et al. (2005). The
authors consider that southern South America (apparently all regions south of the Tropic) underwent a dry
climate during the Mid-Holocene, and then add:
Another model, however, proposed humid and warm
conditions during the mid-Holocene (Iriondo, 1997).
That is an equivocal statement taken from a paper that
does not directly refer to middle-Holocene climates: a
clear cul de sac, without any reference to important
works. The error is particularly sensitive because the
uncited papers appeared in several volumes of Quaternary International. As a member of the Editorial Board of
QI (besides being personally affected) I cannot remain
silent on this issue.
The most comprehensive article about my model is
Iriondo (1999a), Climatic changes in the South
American plains: Records of a continent-size oscillation (see also Iriondo, 1999b; with 50 references):
South America was drier than today in some regions
and more humid in others, as illustrated in Fig. 1.
Reading the several interesting papers of Volume 132,
one can nd that 8 of them t (or were predicted by)
the model. The only possible discrepancy arises with the
paper on the Laguna Merin, where the interpretation of
pollen apparently conicts with the coastal faunal
assemblages and with several Brazilian papers. The
coincidence/discrepancy of the works in volume 132
with my proposal is outlined below.
The development of this model began as a regional
description of the already available information, not as
an ideological product. In total, 58 papers (about all
possible disciplines: geomorphlogy, palynology, glacial
E-mail address: miriond@ceride.gov.ar.

geology, paleontology, marine sediments, archaeology,

eolian sediments, paleopedology, etc.) covering all
countries of South America were selected for that
synthesis. The result was the map shown as Fig. 1.
Two signicant conclusions appeared: (a) a general
coincidence among different proxies inside the same
regions; and (b) a striking similarity between the midHolocene climate and El Nino events. Major El Ninos
appear as snapshots of the long-term mid-Holocene
climate.
Volume 132 is an interesting collection of important
archaeological papers. However, I am afraid that the
promise of paleoenvironments appearing in the rst
place in the title of the volume is in most papers not
adequately fullled.
The article by M. Rodr guez on Archaeobotanics
states the nding of frequent non-local plant species in
the mid-Holocene archaeological record that nicely
show long-range human movements, but not local
environments. On the contrary, the paper by J.
Rodr guez, which discusses a vast humid tropical region
of South America can be taken as an example of my
argument, because the author incorporates sedimentological, geomorphological, palynological, and climatic
results into archaeology.
The paper by Bracco et al. on mounds in a lagoon is
in reality devoted to the late Holocene, where they detect
a dry climate on basis of a study of proxy-records (shell
deposits and phytoliths). This conrms former studies
on the region (Iriondo, 1999a; Stevaux, 2000). On the
other hand, they propose a possible dry climate in the
mid-Holocene without any validation in the paper. Such
a validation would be strongly needed, because their
Fig. 5 clearly shows that the considered environment
(the Merin lagoon) was formed by brackish, mixedhaline and marine environments, that is, closely

1040-6182/$ - see front matter r 2005 Elsevier Ltd and INQUA. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2005.08.001

ARTICLE IN PRESS
248

Forum / Quaternary International 142143 (2006) 247248

sions (see paragraph 5 versus their Fig. 2). The alleged

dry Pampa of the text is based on the former
literature produced by Zarate and Prieto rather than
originating in newer palynological results, which really
point to the contrary.
The contribution by Gil et al. is an effort to link
palaeoenvironments with archaeological records in
south Mendoza. In my opinion, such integration is
modest or poor. On one hand, there are detailed
references to numerous papers on palaeoclimates, which
are not compared among them (although Iriondo
1999a, b are not cited). On the other hand, the
archaeological discussion is not linked to palaeoclimates. Numerous radiocarbon dates were included, but
very few correspond to mid-Holocene. A reasonable
body of original, well integrated data is lacking. The
authors chose the correct option, a dry mid-Holocene
(Iriondo, 1999a), but without new arguments.
Barrientos and Perez perform a correct comparative
study of six palaeoclimatic proxy interpretations of SE
Buenos Aires, although they curiously chose (without a
clear reason) the hypothesis of Tonni et al. (1999) (1999,
humid and dry short periods) instead of a stable humid
phase suggested by the other ve proxies that appear in
the same gure of the paper, disregarding especially the
signicant guanaco signal.
The last paper, produced by Orquera, is an excellent
example of Physical Geography applied to human
territorial adaptations.
Fig. 1. Map of South America showing the main climatic types. V:
Venezuelan (dry); P: Pampean (humid); S: Southern Ocean from
Iriondo (1999a).

References

depending on sea dynamics. It is opportune to mark that

the dry-mid-Holocene opinion contradicts a large
corpus of proxy data published, particularly by Brazilian colleagues on the region.
In the contribution by Mancini et al., the title does
not t the text. It considers only a small fraction of the
Argentine territory between latitudes 321S and 371S,
some 600 km in NS distance and 600,000 km2 of
territory. The four localities considered in those
latitudes are located in the extreme west, which is a
highly unrepresentative belt for the more than 1000 km
wide territory. That result is clear in Fig. 1 of that paper.
Moreover, the area studied in the paper partially covers
three different regions shown on Fig. 1 in this comment,
which produces internal contradictions in the conclu-

Iriondo, M., 1997. Models of deposition of loess and loessoids in the

Upper Quaternary of South America. Journal of South American
Earth Sciences 10, 7179.
Iriondo, M., 1999a. Climatic changes in the South American plains:
records of a continent-scale oscillation. Quaternary International
57/58, 93112.
Iriondo, M., 1999b. Last Glacial Maximum and Hypsithermal in the
Southern Hemisphere. Quaternary International 62, 1119.
Stevaux, J., 2000. Climatic evants during the late Pleistocene and
Holocene in the upper Parana River: correlation with NE
Argentina and Southwest Brazil. Quaternary International 72,
7385.
Tonni, E., Cione, A., Figini, A., 1999. Predominance of arid climates
indicated by mammals in the pampas of Argentina during the Late
Pleistocene and Holocene. Paleogeography, Palaeoclimatology,
Palaeoecology 147, 257281.
Zarate, M., Neme, G., Gil, A., 2005. Mid-Holocene paleoenvironments and human occupation in Southern South America.
Quaternary International 132, 14.