ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY AND EXPERIMENTATION. STUDIES ON THE USE OF GLASS AS RAW MATERIAL IN THE SELKNAM SOCIETY

DE ANGELIS, H., ; M.E. MANSUR, ; R. PIQUE

ETHNOARCHAEOLOGY: CURRENT RESEARCH AND FIELD METHODS

Associazione Italiana di Etnoarcheologia-Onlus

Lugar: Roma; Año: 2013; p. 63 - 68

The Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego is an excellent field of study for ethnoarchaeological research. Aboriginal communities lived there until the early twentieth century, but there is also an extensive documentary record produced by sailors, travelers, scholars and ethnographers since the seventeenth century. As part of a research project in the central part of the Island, an area inhabited by the hunter-gatherer Selk´nam society, one of the topics discussed was the use of glass as raw material for tool manufacturing. This is in fact the only material represented at the Ewan site, a ceremonial site dating from 1905. Based on the information obtained from the last Selk?nam people, and the observation of ethnographic materials from the area that are preserved at the Piggorini Museum, we generated hypotheses about glass flaking and the use of instruments. These hypotheses were the basis for experimental studies aiming to characterize débitage morphology as well as traces of use on glass artifacts. The results obtained let to explain the rapid replacement of local raw materials by an imported material of industrial origin, glass, which in the early twentieth century came to almost completely replace the local rocks. Also, at the methodological level, they demonstrate the value of ethnoarchaeological research to develop experimental programs that allow a better understanding of the archaeological record.