Use and signification of a shell knife. A case study from a burial context in western Patagonian archipelagos

MARIANNE CHRISTENSEN; DOMINIQUE LEGOUPIL; MARIA ESTELA MANSUR

Nice

Congreso; AWRANA- Beyond use wear traces: Tools and People; 2018

The ethnographic literature concerning coastal populations of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego makes frequent mentions to shell knives. According to these, hunter-gatherer-fisher populations normally used this kind of tools, especially for cutting activities, instead of stone tools. They were in use until they were replaced by European metal knives.Shell knives are easy to make and haft, and effective when they are used for different activities. Moreover, experimental work has demonstrated that microscopic manufacture and use wear traces are characteristic on these tools. However, up to now, all the fragments of shell knives discovered in archaeological contexts show intense alteration produced by post depositional phenomena that inhibit functional analysis. From function to symbols, from usewear traces to cutting marks on transformed raw materials, in this communication, we refer to the first shell tool where technological and use wear traces are relatively well preserved. It was discovered in an archaeological burial context, in a cave entrance, in the occidental archipelagoes of Patagonia.