CADIC   02618
CENTRO AUSTRAL DE INVESTIGACIONES CIENTIFICAS
Unidad Ejecutora - UE
capítulos de libros
Título:
Micro-wear formation on glass: An archaeological and experimental study
Autor/es:
DE ANGELIS, H.
Libro:
Traceology today. Methodological issues in the Old World and the Americas
Editorial:
Archaeopress
Referencias:
Año: 2012;
Resumen:
Glass has been extensively exploited as a lithic raw material by the hunter-gatherer populations of Tierra del Fuego. This material started being utilized even before the concrete settlement of European estancias in the island, due to the fact that fragments of glass proceeding from shipwrecks were arriving to the shores since the seventeenth century. From the functional point of view, glass has always been seen as a very fragile raw material, in which traces of use could hardly be preserved. Nevertheless, experimental and archaeological studies on glass tools let us demonstrate that this is not always the case. In this work, we present the experimental program, which includes the techno-morphologic and the microscopic-functional analysis of two series of tools made of glass. The program followed the general guidelines applied in other studies of this kind, including manufacturing of one series of glass scrapers and another of arrowheads, collection and techno-morphological analysis of all the retouch fragments and microflakes. Then, the experimental scrapers were used to work on three basic types of materials: wood Nothofagus and Berberis sp.) with and without its bark; fresh bone and hides (with and without additives), and considering different kinematics and working angles. The results obtained from the experimentation were used as criterion for the study of glass artifacts from two sites belonging to Ewan archaeological locality: Ewan I and Ewan II, which were used in 1905 D.C. On the basis of retouch flakes discovered in the excavations, it was possible to infer which had been the types of instruments made in both sites. It was also possible to determine the specific use given to the scrapers.