On cache recognition. An example from the area of the Chico River (Patagonia, Argentina)

FRANCO NORA. V.; CASTRO ALICIA; CIRIGLIANO NATALIA. A.; MARTUCCI MARILINA.; ACEVEDO AGUSTÍN

Lithic Technology

Left Coast Press

Año: 2011 vol. 36 p. 39 - 53

0197-7261

Caches are places where people store and hide artifacts, food, medicine bundles and /or equipment for their future recovery and utilization. In this paper, we discuss the existence of a cache in La Gruta area, north of Chico river, argentine Patagonia, being this an area with chronological data ranging from ca. 10,845 years to 1,450 uncalibrated years B.P. The position of the assemblage recovered at El Escondrijo site suggests that the artifacts were deposited together. The place where the artifacts were found can be easily seen and reached and, besides, it can be easily located too. Recovered artifacts differ from other assemblages of the area. The main macroscopic differences lie in the excellent quality of raw material used, which was not identified within natural sources in the surroundings, in its color and in the high frequency of bifaces in early stages of manufacture. The fragmentation index of this site is the lowest one identified in the area. Microwear analysis shows that these artifacts have very few microwear traces, which could be related to hide. These data suggest that El Escondrijo is probably a banking cache, which existence could be related to te lack of raw material of a similar quality to the south of this area, outside the Deseado Massif.