The Use of the form:Functional Analysis of Lower Component Artifacts from Piedra Museo (Santa Cruz, Argentina)

VIRGINIA LYNCH, DARÍO ERMO; MYRIAN ALVAREZ

Current Research in the Pleistocene

Center for the Study of the First American

Lugar: Texas; Año: 2012 p. 133 - 137

8755-898X

Determining the usse of different archaeological tools has been a principal goal of archaeologists since the beginning of our discipline. In Argentina, especially in Patagonia, microscopic lithic analysis was launched in 1983 by the innovative work of Mansur, who focused on applyingthis methodology to artifactsfrm early contexts (Cardich et al.1973) thes studies as well a thework of Castro (1994) pioneered intensive research in regional archaeology. Because the way tools are usedreflects a complex set of social behaviors their study reveals the social dynamics of past cultures(Alvarez 2003;Keeley 1980; Mansur-Franchomme1983; Semenov1964). Thus the aim of this papers is to present the results of our analysis of the processing activities of hunter-gatherers who inhabited the Deseado Massif during the Pleistocene -Holocene transition. This was done by applying use-wear analysis to lithic artifacts from the lower component of the Piedra Museo archaeological site. Another aimof this paperis to identify the degree of conservation of use traces and to determine whether differences detected by other Techno-morphological and archaeofaunal analyses between strtigraphic units 4/5 and 6 reveal changes in the use of tools.