A systematic review of past marine faunal remains from South America - Database (V.1.0) [Dataset]

This database, based on archaeological remains of fish, seabirds and pinnipeds from the Holocene in the Southern Hemisphere, was compiled using a systematic review. The systematic review literature followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines (Page et al., 2021). The search was performed in English and Spanish in 6th February 2023 in two databases: (a) Scopus and (b) Web of Science, by applying a combination of keywords within the documents’ title, abstract and keywords. Each search string contained four categories connected by the Boolean operator “AND”: study area (countries and provinces), selected species, period and archaeological terms. Each search term was connected by the Boolean operator “OR” within each category. Data from publications meeting all inclusion criteria were used to create a database in Microsoft Excel. The collected data were based on NISP (Number of Identified Specimens) and MNI (Minimum Number of Individuals) from marine fishes, seabirds and pinnipeds associated with archaeological sites (Grayson, 1984; Lyman, 1994). Both are quantitative metrics for analysing faunal assemblages. NISP is the count of identified specimens, allowing for an examination of the diversity and abundance of faunal remains, while MNI refers to the minimum number of individuals per taxonomic category present in the assemblages (Grayson, 1984; Lyman, 1994). We also collected data from the location (latitude and longitude) and radiocarbon dating of each archaeological site. In some cases, coordinates were not provided, but all publications included a map, allowing us to infer the coordinates using Google Earth Pro (version 7.3.6.9345). The Holocene is divided into three periods: the boundary between the Early and Middle Holocene is set around 8,200 years BP, and the Middle-Late Holocene around 4,200 years BP (Walker et al., 2012). Many publications provided multiple radiocarbon dates with their standard deviations; in these cases, we computed an estimated average of the combined dates and the precision of that estimate following Borenstein et al., (2010). Radiocarbon dates were reported either as years BP (Before Present) or years cal. BP (calibrated Before Present). In the context of marine ecosystems in the Southern Hemisphere, radiocarbon dating can be influenced by regional variations in atmospheric ¹⁴C levels and ocean reservoir effects, making calibration essential for accurate chronological reconstructions (Hogg et al., 2020). Calibration involves using region-specific curves. Accordingly, we used SHCal20 (Hogg et al., 2020) with the Calib v8.2 program (Stuiver & Reimer, 1993). This database contains two main parts: the README, where you can find all the data collected in each column along with an explanation of each item and the complete database