Neutron Activation Analysis in Archaeological Pottery from Mendoza, Central Western Argentina

Summary

In Mendoza, the first record of pottery has been dated ca. 2000 years BP. The technology used varies in terms of manufacture and decoration. Differences in cultural, social and economic organization were also present in the area. The Atuel and Diamante river basins are in a transition zone, where different kinds of social organization, farmers and pastoralists in the north and hunter-gatherers in the south were present. This variability enhances a debate about analytical ways to approach ceramic technology. Actually, archaeometric techniques have been used to study ceramics. These analyses allow us to adjust typologies and improve our knowledge of topics related with production, mobility and interaction within populations from Mendoza. Neutron Activation Analyses (NAA) is a fundamental tool for the development of archeological ceramic research. In this poster, we show the capabilities of this technique applied to ceramics from archaeological sites in the Atuel river basin and Tupungato valley. The preliminary results show well-defined chemical groups that cluster according to chemical variables. Some groups have a strong relationship with regional types and particular environments. We also observed, that one chemical group shows a great variety of types that we assume to be associated with different and distant origins.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)   •
• Ceramics of the Indigenous Cultures in South America: Studies of Production and Exchange using INAA

Keywords

Spatial Coverage