Costs of Acquiring Lithic Materials in High Altitude Environments (Northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina): A GIS-Based Evaluation
Author(s): Silvina Castro; Gustavo Lucero; Valeria Cortegoso; Marsh Eric
Year: 2017
Summary
Based on geo-archaeological studies on the Argentine–Chilean border in the southern Andes, a method is proposed for ranking lithic sources based on the quality of the material, cost of accessibility, and location along travel corridors. In the upper Las Taguas river valley (northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina, 5500–3700 masl), 32,622 lithic artifacts from 30 sites were analyzed to study the variation in the use of seven lithic sources between 10,000 and 500 cal BP. We ranked the time required to travel from each site to all sources with anisotropic analysis based a surface elevation model and Tobler’s cost for movement on slopes. Considering andean topography the accessibility of each source is ranked in terms of its distance to travel corridors and movement based on least cost path calculations. Finally, based on detailed analyses of archaeological material and regional models, we propose distances that may help to estimate lithic sources as non-local or extra-regional.
Cite this Record
Costs of Acquiring Lithic Materials in High Altitude Environments (Northwestern San Juan Province, Argentina): A GIS-Based Evaluation. Silvina Castro, Gustavo Lucero, Valeria Cortegoso, Marsh Eric. Presented at The 81st Annual Meeting of the Society for American Archaeology, Vancouver, British Columbia. 2017 ( tDAR id: 428882)
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Keywords
Geographic Keywords
South America
Spatial Coverage
min long: -93.691; min lat: -56.945 ; max long: -31.113; max lat: 18.48 ;
Record Identifiers
Abstract Id(s): 15938