Blade production at El Sosiego locality, southern Patagonia, Argentina.

Summary

Evidence for blade production has been found in the Santa Cruz River basin, with chronologies between ca. 1900 and 1100 years BP, although not all the cases gexhibit the same characteristics. Differential frequencies in blade numbers have been used to argue that the Santa Cruz River was a frontier between human populations, but there is also variability in knapping methods.

I will focus on El Sosiego locality, which includes an archaeological site dating to ca. 1900 yr BP and surface materials with similar technological characteristics. It represents one of the few cases in the region with consistent evidence for blade production, including prepared blade cores and a higher than usual blade frequency, both as blanks and tools. It also exhibits a higher level of shaping of the cores, including preparation of the flaking platform and the flaking surface, resulting in multiple blade extractions per core, and blades with one or two ridges parallel to the sides.

This study is used as a mean to generate expectations to contrast with other sites with scarcer blades in order to evaluate variability in blade production in relation to frequencies and knapping methods.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 81st Annual Meeting, Orlando, FL (2016)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage