Technological models in an artisanal context of the Argentine Puna at the beginning of the common era

SENTINELLI NATALIA

Simposio; 13th International Symposium of Knappable Materials; 2021

In this work, I share a way in which lithic technology contributes to broaden the understanding of ways of life at the beginning of the first millenium CE in the argentinian Puna. The analysis of the artifactual lithic assemblage of the Structure 4 of Las Escondidas (LE4) (Antofagasta de la Sierra, Argentina) showed its functionality as a locus of artisan activities, possibly on a family scale, circa 2000 years BP.During the reconstruction of the lithic production processes in LE4, I became interested in the reconstruction of the dispositions of the technological habitus involved in the elaboration, maintenance, use and disposal of knapped stone instruments. This concept highligths the orientations of technological practice that are not always explicitly presented (Bourdieu 1987), recovers the role of technology in the continuous re-construction of the world, and links it with the cultural, traditional, and social dimensions of the ways of doing.The main theoretical-methodological question is adressed to the variables and the observable data in the artifactual assemblage that allow to identify these habitual dispositions of the agents involved in the lithic production. For this, it was necessary, on the one hand, to consider the mechanics of rocks, the morpho-technical features of the artifacts and the associated technical gestures, and the functional inferences of the morphologies of bevels and instruments. On the other hand, in order to express the elements involved in the ranges of technical choices and their relationships, I developed the proposal of technological models, based on Sinclair´s constellations of knowledge (2000), articulated with considerations about habitus and practice. A technologicalmodel expresses the repertoire of possibilities, preferences and restrictions that configured the technological habitus of the LE4 knappers, and can be observed in the characteristics of the assemblage, in four dimensions: raw materials, procedures and techniques, implements and desired end points.Here I present the technological models for the complete LE4 lithic assemblage and for the two most frequent rocks in the context. The source of raw material is the starting point of any production sequence, and the comparison between the ways of knapping and using different rocks allows to register similarities and singularities that are indicative of the dispositions of a technological habitus.