Raw material availability and distribution, and human exploitation strategies in coastal North Patagonia, Río Negro province, Argentina

MARCELO CARDILLO Y JIMENA ALBERTI

Iasi

Simposio; 5TH ARHEOINVEST SYMPOSIUM; 2013

Alexandru Ioan Cuza? University of Iași

The coast of San Matías Gulf (Río Negro province, Patagonia, Argentina (Figure 1) can be divided into two areas, according to its orientation and the general environmental settings. The northern coast (Figure 1) runs from East to West and it has active cliffs in alternation with bays and abrasion platforms. In this portion of the Gulf there are about 50 archaeological loci, in form of shell middens and lithic scatters on deflated surfaces (Favier Dubois et al. 2008). These locus have been dated between ca. 6000 and 450 years 14C BP (Favier Dubois 2012). The western coast (Figure 1) runs from North to South and has a more regular beach with a wide rocky intertidal rage (up to 1.5 km). Archaeological information in this sector comes form 30 locations, most of them dated around 3000 years 14C BP (Favier Dubois y Borella 2011). The raw material sources on the northern coast are secondary ones, composed mainly by volcanic rocks of very good and excellent flaking properties. These sources show a continuous distribution. The western coast, on the other hand, has primary and secondary sources of greater quality, integrated mainly by cryptocrystalline rocks. Also there are some sectors in this area with significant primary outcrops of sedimentary and volcanic rocks, with different degrees of silicification. Some of them probably were used in an opportunistic way. We think that these differences affected the lithic resources management strategies (procurement, production, transportation and discard of stone tools). In a regional scale, we have evidence of good quality raw material transport, from areas beyond the Gulf, which are located between 200 and 400 km away (Favier Dubois et al. 2009). Taking into account the distribution and composition of the sites that have been studied, we discuss possible models of exploitation of lithic raw materials. To do that, we use statistical method of spatial analysis and multivariate techniques to detect patterns in the data set.