Abstract

The results of archaeological surveys carried out in the insular and continental coastal areas south of the Taitao Peninsula and the Gulf of Penas (similar to 46 degrees-48 degrees S) in the Ays & eacute;n region, in western Patagonia are presented. In them, important evidence of material records from colonial and republican times was revealed as a result of activities originated both by canoe groups (marine hunter-gatherer-fishermen) and by Europeans/Creoles, at times when the ways of life of the first were dismantled and transformed, after European contact in the 16th century. This extensive area began to be visited and occupied under new geopolitical, extractivist economic and strategic terms, reconfiguring that space. Through the chronological and material record of 17 archaeological sites, we discuss variables such as the diversity of site represented, subsistence, diet and occupation chronologies in relation to the use of the coastal edge during historical times in this archipelagic space.