Insectos en contextos urbanos: su rol como evidencia en un caso de reuso de objetos del siglo XIX

During an excavation of the remains of a nineteenth-century latrine and garbage pit located in the city of Buenos Aires (Argentina), several meters below the current surface of the land, dozens of glass bottles perfectly preserved, originally used as containers for alcoholic beverages, were recovered. Inside one of them is the presence of numerous pupae and empty pupariae of flies whose analysis revealed that they were saprophagous species (that feed on decaying organic matter) and an adult beetle predator of them, all usually used for the interpretation of funerary archaeological contexts. The preservation of the remains inside a glass bottle makes it necessary to consider why the content of that particular bottle attracted these insects and enabled the development of their life cycle and satisfy their trophic requirements, and also estimating which process of reuse was involved the piece to be associated with the entomological record.