Production, use, and maintenance trajectories of a specialized agricultural stone tool from the high elevation deserts of Northwestern Argentina

SENTINELLI NATALIA; HOCSMAN SALOMON

Simposio; 11th International Symposium of Knappable Materials; 2017

IMHICIHU

A specialized agricultural stone tool is often recovered at agro-pastoralist sites in Northwestern Argentina (Escola & Hocsman 2011). A sample of debitage associated with these tools from Antofagasta de la Sierra is analyzed in this study.It has been suggested (Escola et al. 2013) that these very big artifacts started their use lives as knifes with a large edge, a very low edge angle and a slightly asymmetrical edge, and during their life histories the angles of the cutting edges became more and more asymmetrical and with a large edge angle, due to frequent reactivation.Specifically, we are interested in shedding light on the production, use and maintenance trajectories of these artifacts. Therefore, we report on a methodology of analysis of debitage that aims at the reconstruction of the production, use, and maintenance trajectories. This method implies the use of photographs, which are analyzed using simple software. The use of the scale tool in AutoCAD allows us to make precise measurements, which are very difficult to obtain on the flakes themselves. In addition, this method allows us to calculate the angles that the edges of these tools had in different moments of their life histories. Through descriptive statistics and the application of indexes, we can evaluate the degree of edge angle transformation.