Geochemical analysis of lithic raw material in the São Francisco River Basin

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Current Methods and Applications to Chert Sourcing: Case Studies from Across the Americas" session, at the 90th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In the São Francisco River Basin there is evidence of human occupation since 14.0 ky cal BP. Models of dispersal suggest an intensification of occupied areas around 11.0 ky cal BP, followed by regionalization after two millennia. The study of lithic technology, as the major evidence available, is crucial to understand these long-term processes. Distinct technological organizations have been identified since the early period in the region. These differences can be related to the access to high-quality raw materials, which, in turn, is associated with the mobility patterns of the groups. Groups with lower mobility and restricted access to locally available raw materials organize their technological schemes to produce tools using those materials. If the locally available raw materials are not of high quality, tools that require superior raw materials will not be produced. In this study, the potential sources of raw material and lithic artifacts from three archaeological sites with dates from the Early Holocene are geochemically characterized. The objective is to assess the extent to which the technological organization correlates with the availability of raw materials in the site regions and to explore how this information can elucidate the mobility patterns of the groups during the period.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Society for American Archaeology 90th Annual Meeting, Denver, CO (2025)   •
• Current Methods and Applications to Chert Sourcing: Case Studies from Across the Americas

Keywords

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 52233