Raw Material Consumption Strategies in Holocenic Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Groups from the South-Eastern Coast of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina): A Use-Wear Perspective.

BRIZ I.; PAL, N; ALVAREZ, M.

Lithic Technology

Taylor and Francis Ltd.

Lugar: Londres; Año: 2023 vol. 49 p. 133 - 147

Hunter-fisher-gatherer societies who inhabited the south-eastern Atlantic Coast of Isla Grande deTierra del Fuego (Argentina) exploited a wide range of local raw materials that includes, amongothers, metamorphic, fine-grained rocks and slates that exhibit different physical properties. Theaim of this work is to discuss raw materials procurement and production strategies in relationto tool usage. For that purpose, we studied eight archaeological sites retrieved in the LateHolocene. We will focus on the economic practices that involve lithic raw materials tounderstand technological organization based on the use-wear method and morpho-technicalanalysis. The results show that these societies developed a technological strategy that impliedthe selection of rocks with specific properties for performing different and singular activities.Fine-grained rocks were mainly exploited for manufacturing small retouched tools used forscraping hides whereas metamorphic rhyolites and slates were mostly procured to producelong retouched blanks for sawing hard materials.