To what extent do raw material or design travel? Distribution fo artifacts in central-western Santa Cruz Province (Patagonia Argentina).

ESPINOSA, S.; CASSIODORO G.; AGNOLIN, A.; FLORES CONI J.

Simposio; 11th International Symposium on Knappable Materials; 2017

In central-western Santa Cruz province (Argentina), a variety of black stones have been identified which have aphanitic texture, vitreous characteristics and fracture conchoidally. These are basalts, tuff, lava and breccia, and were selected for manufacturing large artifacts with long edges .In the study region, the sources of these raw materials have been registered which include many lake basins such as Salitroso, Belgrano, Guitarra, Strobel, Cardiel, San Martin as well as Pampa del Asador. Previous analyses have shown a limited circulation of these stones outside the basins (Espinosa et al. 2016). Since other lithic resources do circulate among basins (e.g. obsidian), we seek to evaluate if, in this case, particular artifact designs were selected for transport. In order to evaluate the scale of circulation and transport for bifaces and blade manufactured artefacts, we use geochemical, morphometric and assemblage composition information.