BONE SPEARHEADS FROM THE LATE PREHISPANIC PERIOD OF SIERRAS OF CORDOBA (ARGENTINA)

MATÍAS MEDINA; GISELA SARIO; SEBASTIÁN PASTOR

International Journal of Osteoarchaeology

John Wiley & Sons Ltd

Año: 2022 vol. 32 p. 759 - 768

The archaeological record of the Late Prehispanic Period of Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina(~1220-330 cal BP), has revealed a rich and highly developed bone industry. The worked bones arepurported to include various types of hunting or warfare weapons such as arrowheads, knives anddaggers or bleeders. However, most of the latter two tools can now be interpreted as spear or spearthrower dart heads based on ethnographic and macro-wear studies. Thus, the aim of this article is topresent the techno-typological and functional analysis carried out on the bone spearheads collected atthe San Roque archaeological locality (Villa Carlos Paz, Argentina). Spearheads are defined asmassive and strong pointed tools that are suitable for hafting to a shaft about 15 mm or more indiameter, which corresponds to ethnographic spears or darts. The tools were assigned to the LatePrehispanic Period based on their similarity with those recovered in neighboring sites and regionsduring the last 1500 years. The study supports the contention that Late Prehispanic people developeda variable and highly sophisticated set of weapons suitable for taking any animal resource whenencountered, minimizing the cost of failure in the capture of the prey they depended on. However,warfare and the use of spears in raids against other groups needs to be taken into account becauseevidence of physical interpersonal violence increases in the Late Prehispanic Period. Finally, it isproposed that museum collections can provide valuable data for archaeologists, mostly when artifactswith low frequency in modern excavations are the focus of the analysis.