Down to the bone: Bone Technology in Southern Patagonia

SCHEINSOHN, VIVIAN

Paris

Congreso; 6 th Meeting Worked Bone Research Group (ICAZ); 2007

MAE, Université de Paris X

Nowadays, the many sites (which includes Monte Verde, Los Toldos, Piedra Museo, Cerro Casa de Piedra among others) dated before 10.000 BP in Patagonia; the region located at the Southern tip of South America, allowed to archaeologists working there to reach an agreement about the peopling of that area, established since at least that date. Bone technology was developed since then onwards, reaching a high degree of elaboration and aboundance in the archaeological record of coastal sites. By the contrary, in continental Patagonia there were few bone tools but  they  were recorded almost in every site. In spite of that situation bone tools were neglected in the history of archaeological research with most researchers only mentoning its presence. In the hope to change this situation and departing from previous works (Scheinsohn 1992, Nami and Scheinsohn 1993, Scheinsohn 1997, Scheinsohn 2002, Scheinsohn and Lucero 2006) in this paper I intend to explain how bone materials were exploited in that region. Spatial scale was set to the Argentinean Patagonia, considering tools from Northern (Piedra Parada Locality) and  Southern  Patagonia (Cerro casa de Piedra locality and Tierra del Fuego) as well as bibliographic sources.