Vetrisano, L. y N. V. Franco. 2017. Heat treatment and changes in siliceous rock quality in the Southern End of the Deseado Massif (Patagonia, Argentina

VETRISANO, LUCAS; FRANCO, NORA VIVIANA

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires

Congreso; 11th International Symposium on Knappable Materials; 2017

Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas

The use of high-quality rocks and heat-treatment by hunter-gatherers during the initial exploration and colonization of America has been emphasized by different authors.Here we present the case of the Southern End of the Deseado Massif, where human occupations have been dated from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition until historical times. Results of an intense survey of lithic resources show the presence of primary and secondary sources of middle and high quality siliceousrocks, most of them of hydrothermal origin. These siliceous rocks havea highly localized occurrence and,in most cases, their quality doesnot match the one found at the archaeological record ?which encompasses logistic sites, multiple activity sites and caches of artifacts?.Here we present the results of heat treatment experiments on localavailable rocks, focusing in samples mainly from primary sources. Resultsobtained are compared with the artifacts found, in order to evaluate thepotential utilization of the different sources and the presence of heattreatment in the local archaeological record.