On the Role of Bifacial Points in the Construction of Past Identities and Boundaries in Southeastern and Southern Brazil during the Holocene

Summary

This is an abstract from the "SAA 2019: General Sessions" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Archaeological sites presenting bifacial points dated from the Holocene are common in southern and southeastern Brazil. Our studies have pointed out that the morphological and technological diversity of these bifacial points was much greater than it had been postulated in the past, indicating the presence of potential past boundaries and territories. However, no tests of the relationship between raw materials and point shapes have been performed so far. We aim to explore the relationship between raw material and the shape of bifacial points from southern and southeastern Brazil to better understand whether the morphological variation observed among points from different regions could be a consequence of the differential availability of raw material or of different cultural norms. According to the theoretical expectations and heuristic models of style and function proposed by Dunnell (1978), our hypotheses is that stem morphology indicates choices made by the human groups and, ultimately, is a reflection of possible past cultural boundaries and group identities. The analysis of 1492 bifacial points from southern and southeastern Brazil shows that points from different regions present a predominant stem morphology, regardless of raw material type, supporting our initial hypothesis.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24232