Evidences of architecture made with perishable materials at Buenos Aires, Argentina (16th to 18th centuries)

Abstract

The indigenous population occupying the place where Buenos Aires was founded in 1580 has always been seen as nomadic or semi-nomadic. This has been interpreted as having no form of architecture, or what used left no traces that archeology could recover. A review of studies already done in the city shows at least two cases in which a series of postholes located in lines could indicate the likely presence of so-called indigenous awnings. That is evidence of having been made constructions with vertical posts and closed with branches, straw or hides of cows or horses as recorded in historical documentation, which subsisted in others regions until the nineteenth century. But it also may have been some kind of very modest timber of the poor Creole architecture, although cultural materiality has to confirm the first hypothesis.