Obsidian use and mobility range during the early and middle Holocene in the salt Puna of Argentine

PINTAR, ELIZABETH; MARTÍNEZ, JORGE G.; ASCHERO, CARLOS A.

Vale de Uco (Mza)

Congreso; 4º Southern Desert Conference; 2014

Laboratorio de Paleo-Ecología Humana

In the South or Salt Puna, a high and dry region at large ?above 3400 m asl, with precipitation < 200mm/year?archaeological evidence in the region of Antofagasta de la Sierra at Peñas de las Trampas 1.1 (ca. 10,200 BP) and Quebrada Seca 3 (ca. 9800 BP) suggests that initial colonization by hunter-gatherer groups began ca. 10,000 years BP (Aschero and Martínez 2001; Martínez 2007; Martínez et al. 2010). Hunter-gatherer land-use pattern in the Salt Puna was dependent on regional climatic and environmental changes that occurred after the Pleistocene/Holocene transition. The Early Holocene cooler and moister climate in the Puna resulted in the formation and expansion of lagoons and wetlands, however beginning ca. 8500 BP, a gradual dryer and warmer trend that signaled the beginning of the Middle Holocene changed the characteristics of the landscape (Tchilinguirian and Olivera 2014). In this paper we discuss the use of raw materials, especially obsidian, as a tool to understand the mobility range of hunter-gatherers living in this high-elevation desert between ca. 9200 and 6000 years BP. Macroscopic analyses have shown a differential use of local and non-local lithic raw materials during the Early and Middle Holocene, suggesting a reduction in mobility during the latter period (Mondini et al. 2013; Pintar 1996, 2009, 2014). However, XRF analyses of non-local obsidians found in Middle Holocene contexts (8000?6000 BP) have determined the use of five sources within a range of 120 km from the basin of Laguna de Antofagasta, and indicate a high mobility (Pintar et al. 2014). Here we expand our knowledge of obsidian use by extending the time depth of our analyses to the Early Holocene. We present XRF results from samples from Quebrada Seca 3 ?a site that constitutes the chronological backbone of this region, and compare these results to those from Middle Holocene contexts at Cueva Salamanca 1 and Peñas de la Cruz in order to understand which obsidian sources were used and how mobility ranges varied between the Early and Middle Holocene.