GEOARCHAEOLOGY, GEOCHEMICAL AND SPATIAL DISTRIBUTIONS OF THE COCHE QUEMADO OBSIDIAN SOURCES: SUTHERN MENDOZA (ARGENTINA)

SERGIO DIEGUEZ; GLASCOCK MICHAEL; MARÍA LAURA SALGÁN; MARÍA PAZ POMPEI; GUSTAVO NEME; ADOLFO GIL

Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires-Necochea

Jornada; 11 th International symposium on knappable materials; 2017

Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas (IMHICIHU)-CONICET

During the last twenty years a total of four primary obsidian sources were recorded in southern Mendoza province. The archaeological record indicate that all of them were used during the Holocene until pre hispanic times, however many obsidian artifacts still are assigned to unknown sources. Recent surveys allowed to discover a new obsidian source which was called Coche Quemado (CQ). It is located in the western margin of the lower basin of the Rio Grande, in the Mendoza Andean piedmont. The obsidian in the source appear as nodules of variable sizes and very good quality for the tools manufacture. The nodules are part of a conglomerate that corresponds to the geological formation Agua de la piedra (Oligocene). In this paper we present the spatial distribution of the source, the variety of the macroscopic characteristics of the raw material and current trends in the archaeological record. Seventeen samples were analyzed by INAA and XRF in the Achaeometry Laboratory at MUUR. The results indicates that the source has a different geochemical signal than all other sources in the region.