Provenance of obsidian artifacts from sources in Central Argen

GIESSO MARTIN; DURAN VICTOR; GLASCOCK MICHAEL; CORTEGOSO VALERIA; SANHUEZA LORENA

Saint Louis

Congreso; 75º Annual Meeting of Society for American Archaeology.; 2010

Sociedad Americana de Arqueología

In Argentina and Chile, several volcanic regions contain high qualityobsidian; and its exploitation and usage began with the very early settlersduring the Pleistocene-Holocene transition and continued until historic times (Seelenfreund et al. 1996; Stern et al. 2000; Yacobaccio et al. 2002; Durán etal. 2004; among others).In 2002, we began a project of systematic survey ofobsidian sources in the region located between 32 and 37 degrees latitude south. Differences in the geologic structure related to the angle of thetectonic subduction of the plates generate important implications in terms ofthe volcanic activity in the region. In this way there is a strong volcanicactivity at south of 32 degrees south, and on the contrary, there is littlevolcanic activity to the north until 28 degrees south. More than 800 obsidiansamples: 650 from Argentina and 177 from Chile,f rom 100 archaeological sites were analyzed by portable XRF.