The use of quartz as raw material in hunter-gatherers lithic assemblages: necessity or choice?

MANSUR M . E.

Burgos

Congreso; XVII UISPP World Congress; 2014

Fundación Atapuerca

The study of lithic assemblages of hunter-gatherers societies constitutes one of the key tools to understand their technological organization and to propose hypotheses about aspects of the economic and social organization. From this point of view, it is essential to try to understand the reason for the selection of specific raw materials for the manufacture of certain instruments. In order to approach this subject, we chose to address the analysis of the lithic assemblages from the perspective of the techno functionalanalysis, allowing to discuss three aspects closely interlinked: the selection of raw material, its transformation into consumer goods of mineralnature and the use of these tools to process various types of resources. The lithic record of the southern sector of the southern cone is a great field to explore the relationships between these three aspects. Indeed, the archaeological sites of hunter-gatherer societies have provided extensive lithic series characterized by the diversity of raw materials represented in the assemblages, including quartzite, silicified tuffs, rhyolites, quartz, etc. The analysis has been developed on the basis of the technomorphologic characterization and the microscopicfunctional analysis. A review of the representation of raw materials reveals that quartz is often represented. However, we noted that its representation is frequently a minority, but it is very common that it is present. It has also been observed that its use is related to the application of certain knapping techniques. Products made on quartz are different regarding the morphology of the edges, and they have frequently been used for specific tasks. Therefore, their analysis allows us to discuss the interrelationship between raw material, technology, morphology and function.