CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

Carriqueo rock shelter is situated in the Limay river basin, in a topographical environment of steppe plateaus, at Pilcaniyeu Department, Río Negro province, Argentina. It lies on the West side of La Oficina creek, a tributary of the Limay river. This shelter -ENE oriented- could be one of several functional different sites (residential settlements, lithic worksite, pigment supply source) used contemporarily. In spite of its small size, Carriqueo had intense settlements as suggested by the high density of archaeological artifacts found there, mostly lithic ones, bones and ceramic fragments. A sample of disperse charcoal found in an exploratory pit was dated by 14C analysis resulting in 2620 + 110 years BP. Recently, during an excavation in 2006, some prepared hearths were found; three of them were dated resulting in 940+40, 610+50, and 0-200 years BP. Apart from the high density of the above mentioned findings, it was evident that the use of pigments was intense, considering the several red and green fragments of mineral found, and also the large quantity of artifacts that have ochre on its surface. The shell, which is the subject of this study, was found when the perturbed sediment by looting was cleaned. This was a remarkable finding because it suggested that it had been used as a container to prepare red paint. This research hypothesis was supported by the consistency and the large quantity of adhered unknown material. In addition, the presence of a substance which worked as a vehicle in a nowadays hardened and maybe degraded matrix is presumed. In order to elucidate the composition of the adhered material a set of analytical techniques covering inorganic and organic information was employed. TXRF and DRX techniques were selected for inorganic information revealing the presence of calcium and iron among other elements, consistent with hematite and calcium carbonate. FT-IR analysis indicated the presence of characteristic carbonate (862 and 1468 cm-1) bands together with bands attributable to the presence of organic compounds (2853 and 2924 cm-1). Analysis by GC-MS of the lipidic compounds extracted from the red paste showed that the main acids were palmitic (C16:0) and stearic (C18:0) together with minor oleic (C18:1) acid. This fatty acid composition is typical of degraded animal fats and suggests the use of an animal source as a potential binder in the preparation of the red paste.