Authors: Oscar M Palacios Katleen Van Meel René Van Grieken LuéMerú Marcó P Cristina Vázquez
Publish Date: 2013/07/26
Volume: 298, Issue: 2, Pages: 1245-1255
Abstract
The investigation of huntergatherers archaeological sites in the Limay river basin Patagonia Argentina raised questions concerning the lithic technology The chemical characterization of artifacts rocks and possible sources of provenances could help to elucidate the huntergatherer mobility In three archaeological sites—Rincón Chico 2 RCh2/87 14C 710 ± 60 BP Cueva Traful I CTI 14C 9430 ± 230 BP and Casa de Piedra de Ortega CPO 14C 2840 ± 80 BP tools and debitage or discarded flakes made in black volcanic rock have been found Nearby an extensive rock outcrop of black volcanite Paso Limay quarry CPL with similar characteristics was located Samples coming from these four sites were analyzed by energy dispersive Xray fluorescence spectrometry This characterization allowed the geochemical classification of the lithic material and to correlate the samples with the suspected source after a previous statistical analysis The majority of the samples were classified as dacites and rhyolites Only samples coming from CPO site the closest place to CPL were made exclusively with the quarry rocks A set of five samples from RCh2/87 and two samples from CTI appear to have same chemical composition as CPL in spite of this site is placed in the opposite bank of the Limay river suggesting that huntergatherers could accede to the quarry eventually Finally only a set of five samples coming from RCh2/87 and CTI do not group with the quarry This fact evidences the existence of secondary sources of supply The information of this research allowed inferring ancient human mobility patterns in the regionThis research was partially supported by the following institutions IAEA 13864 PICT N° 14171 UBACYT F059 CONICET PIP 5344 and PIP 02297 and the CDCHTUCLA The authors thank to Lic Gosmyr Torres for the support in the statistical analysis of the data and to CIAFIC Centro de Investigaciones en Antropología Filosófica y Cultural for their collaboration in this research
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