Profile of Luis A. Borrero

Luis Borrero grew up in Argentina. As a child, he became enamored with early human history, thanks to his father, who worked in radio broadcasting in Patagonia. “He never went to high school, but he was an amateur historian, very much interested in the history of the colonization of Patagonia, which is exactly what I study now,” says Borrero. Despite this early exposure, when Borrero finished high school, he was not quite ready to study archaeology. “I was more interested in climbing, exploring, and going to places in Patagonia, particularly, but also in the Andes, in Mendoza, or in the Puna in Northwest Argentina, places which were more or less devoid of people,” says Borrero.

Luis Borrero. Image credit: Luis A. Borrero.

During these travels, Borrero was often confronted with remains of the past, such as projectile points. “Slowly, the concept of combining my interest in climbing and exploration with a career came to my mind,” he says. Which is how in his mid-twenties Borrero started studying archaeology and anthropology at the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina.

Borrero went on to have a long and distinguished career as an archaeologist. He has made landmark contributions to the understanding of Pleistocene megafaunal extinctions in South America, colonization of new lands by Patagonian hunter-gatherers, and the peopling of southern South America. He is known for his groundbreaking work on taphonomy—the study of the processes of fossilization—of bones and has incorporated a variety of approaches in his archaeology research.

Now a researcher at CONICET, Buenos Aires, Borrero was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021. In his Inaugural Article, Borrero describes his discoveries on the role of scavenging among Holocene hunter-gatherers (1).

Field Experience

Borrero says he took longer than usual to finish his undergraduate degree. “It took me 8 years just because I was always ready to go to the field with every one of my professors,” he says. The extra time paid off. “When I finished, I already had a lot of experience,” says Borrero.

However, his studies were interrupted by sociopolitical events. “In the mid-70s, at some point, the university was closed because there were many political problems and there was a lot of violence,” says Borrero. “At that time, I put on my backpack, and I went to the north, visiting Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Honduras, up to Mexico, and I was visiting archeology sites everywhere,” he says. As he talked with archaeologists at these sites, he gathered knowledge about the archaeology of the rest of the Americas. “That was very important to me because when I returned to Argentina, I was very much interested in the archaeology of Patagonia, but my eyes and my mind were always comparing things with other places in the world,” says Borrero.

Invited by his professors, Borrero spent some time working at the Beagle Channel in Tierra del Fuego. “I fell in love with the environment, it was so interesting in terms of the archaeology and the mountains and the forest,” he says. Even today, Borrero continues to visit the region for expeditions.

While working in Tierra del Fuego, Borrero met Earl Saxon from the University of Durham, who taught him how to work with bones. Saxon later offered to take Borrero on an expedition to Milodon Cave in Last Hope Sound on the Pacific Coast in South Chile. “I said “yes” immediately, of course,” he says.

In 1976, Borrero went with Saxon and spent months digging at Cueva del Milodón. “Cueva del Milodón is a huge cave, more than 200 meters long, and is full of evidence of late Pleistocene life, including some evidence of the place being used by carnivores, by extinct herbivores and humans,” says Borrero. “So there is so much to learn, and every 3 or 4 years we continue doing some kind of work within that cave and we learn something else, so that's probably my favorite place in Patagonia,” he says (2).

Borrero’s fieldwork in Last Hope Sound also led to his first article on the extinction of late Pleistocene megafauna, published in 1977, a year before he completed his undergraduate studies in anthropology (3). “To begin to organize my thoughts concerning the extinction of megafauna was really a fascinating process, so that's probably one of my favorite papers,” he says.

Saxon also played a role in Borrero’s PhD research. Saxon had been exploring the north of Tierra del Fuego, and offered Borrero information from that region, including the location and radiocarbon dating of a couple of sites. As soon as he finished his undergraduate studies, Borrero headed there. “I went to work in the north of Tierra del Fuego with the help of a couple of friends, and we were doing a number of things in order to finish the work, and it led to a decent dissertation,” says Borrero. “In 1986, I finished my PhD, and I was ready for new adventures.”

Peopling of Southern South America

Immediately after completing his PhD, Borrero received a professorship at the University of Buenos Aires, where he has stayed ever since. One of the topics of his interest was how people first colonized southern South America. Over the years, he has adapted sophisticated analytical techniques to address this question, and his work has led to several insights.

Borrero is particularly proud of a 1989 article in which he formulated a model of exploration and colonization of southern South America (4). “The basis of that model was that the knowledge of environment by the people who produced the archaeological sites can be reconstructed if you have that point of view on your mind when you are dealing with the bones and the stones,” he says.

Borrero continues to apply this model in various locations, including during more recent work aimed at understanding the exploration and human colonization of the Puna environments of north Chile and northwest Argentina. Working with Calogero Santoro, Borrero recently updated his previous model. “The idea now is that there are patches in the environment, which are the nodes where people are located, and the interconnection between the patches is basic to the success of the human installation in very difficult environments like that of the Puna, which is 4,000 meters high and that leads to hypoxia problems and hard-to-obtain resources,” he says.

Taphonomic Approaches

Borrero has never shied from trying new techniques in archaeology. “I read a lot about different ways of doing archeology, and I try to incorporate everything that appears to be feasible to apply in Patagonia,” he says.

Borrero became interested in the role of bones and their differential preservation at archaeology sites early in his career. In 1981, he went to Albuquerque, New Mexico and attended classes with taphonomist Lewis Binford. “He was kind enough to give me access to his bone collection, so I was learning a lot,” says Borrero.

On his return to Argentina, he began a taphonomic project in Tierra del Fuego in 1983, following a number of guanaco carcasses—a focus of Borrero’s Inaugural Article—and observing how the carcasses transformed over time. “After 3 years working there, I learned something which really impacted me,” says Borrero. “I found out that there were bones from modern guanacos, unrelated to the archeological remains, which were buried and in contact with archeological bones at many of the sites in the north of Tierra del Fuego,” he says.

Borrero’s work influenced the incorporation of taphonomic approaches into Argentinean archaeology. “Today, Argentina has a very healthy taphonomic community, and I'm still working with them on the same subject that I was working in 1983 in Tierra del Fuego, the winter mass death of guanacos,” he says. However, he is now part of a larger community that follows 500 guanaco carcasses, compared to the 13 carcasses he followed in 1983.

Scavenging by Early Humans

After studying various archeological sites, Borrero became intrigued by the provocative idea that the Holocene humans may have survived by scavenging. “In parts of South America, people are against the idea of humans scavenging; they consider it demeaning,” he says. “But it is not demeaning, it’s just one of the ways to live under certain conditions, and there is nothing wrong with that. So, for that reason, I chose that subject for my Inaugural Article,” says Borrero.

Although archaeologists generally agree that humans might have scavenged during the late Pleistocene Epoch, there was little to no information about scavenging during the Holocene Epoch in South America. “I concentrated my efforts in looking for places in which there were at least suspicions of scavenging or conditions under which scavenging was a possibility, and I found four iconic examples that I included in this paper,” says Borrero.

Borrero’s findings carry far-reaching implications. “The most important is that if you continue to concentrate on big sites with many tools and bones, the probability that you discover the evidence of scavenging is very low,” says Borrero. He instead suggests focusing on smaller sites. “Those are the places in which you have a rational possibility of recognizing scavenging,” says Borrero.

Continuing Explorations

Borrero recently retired from his faculty and research jobs, freeing him up to focus on what he loves best. “Now that I'm retired, I don't have teaching obligations. I don't have administrative obligations. Now, I have all my time for research, and it’s fantastic,” says Borrero. “Now I spend more time than ever in the field.”

Borrero’s former students often invite him to participate in a variety of projects. He is involved in a project with Manuel San Román, studying human exploration of the islands in the archipelagos of southwest Chile. “We have a boat with which we can go and spend one month visiting different sites between Londonderry and Picton Islands and the west side of the Strait of Magellan, it's really fantastic,” he says (5).

Borrero is also working on a project with Fabiana Martin comparing early human occupation of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts of southern South America. “We are trying to understand the functioning of the ecosystem before the arrival of humans in order to discuss the effects of the arrival of humans in a comparative basis, doing archeological and paleoecological work,” he says.

These projects allow Borrero to indulge in his favorite aspect of his work. “Exploration is what I really enjoy the most,” he says. “I consider myself to be very lucky to discover this way of life.”