"Twenty years of Ethnoarchaeological research in Tierra del Fuego: some thoughts for European Shell-Midden Archaeology."

Introduction Twenty years of ethnoarchaeological research in Tierra del Fuego on hunterr-fisher-gatherers (Fig. 1) has led us to reflect on some of the assumptions made in coastal archaeology, and specifically on the in interpretation of mesolithic shell middens. Contrasting the results from archaeological and ethnographic work on the same group is a way to of rewviewing the potential weak areas in uur methods and theories, because archaeological conclusions are almost always based, in an epistemological sense, on ethnographic analogies. These reflections are concerned with field methodology and the general theory of HFGs and are presented here as a point of reference for discussing inferences about prehistoric litoral societies.