Costs of Acquiring Lithic Materials in High Altitude Environments (Northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina): A GIS-Based Evaluation

CASTRO S.; LUCERO G.; CORTEGOSO V.; MARSH E.

Vancouver

Congreso; SAA 82nd Annual Meeting; 2017

SOCIETY FOR AMERICAN ARCHAEOLOGY

Based on geo-archaeological studies on the Argentine?Chilean border in the southern Andes, a method is proposed for ranking lithic sources based on the quality of the material, cost of accessibility, and location along movement routes. In the Upper Las Taguas river valley (northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina, 5500?3700 masl), 32,622 lithic artifacts from 30 sites were analyzed to study the variation in the use of seven lithic sources between 10,000 and 500 cal BP. We ranked the time required to travel from each site to all sources with anisotropic analysis based a surface elevation model and Tobler?s cost for movement on different slopes. An anisotropic analysis revealed the effects of distance and slope on the cost of accessibility of each source. Considering that a landscape with severe topography limits the possibilities of natural corridors of movement, based on least cost path calculations, the accessibility of each source is ranked also in terms of its distance to travel corridors and movement in intermodal spaces. Finally, based on these detailed analysis of the archaeological material and models at the meso-scale, we estimate the distance ranges and traveling days to the lithic sources involved in local and extra-regional sources.