Raw Material Consumption Strategies in Holocenic Hunter-Fisher-Gatherer Groups from the South-Eastern Coast of Tierra del Fuego (Argentina): A Use-Wear Perspective.

ABSTRACT

Hunter-fisher-gatherer societies who inhabited the south-eastern Atlantic Coast of Isla Grande de Tierra del Fuego (Argentina) exploited a wide range of local raw materials that includes, among others, metamorphic, fine-grained rocks and slates that exhibit different physical properties. The aim of this work is to discuss raw materials procurement and production strategies in relation to tool usage. For that purpose, we studied eight archaeological sites retrieved in the Late Holocene. We will focus on the economic practices that involve lithic raw materials to understand technological organization based on the use-wear method and morpho-technical analysis. The results show that these societies developed a technological strategy that implied the selection of rocks with specific properties for performing different and singular activities. Fine-grained rocks were mainly exploited for manufacturing small retouched tools used for scraping hides whereas metamorphic rhyolites and slates were mostly procured to produce long retouched blanks for sawing hard materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Raw materials
• Tierra del Fuego
• use-wear
• hunter-fisher-gatherer

Acknowledgments

To Vargas family, Don Vera, Mrs. Isabel and Mr. Morocco for their generosity during fieldwork activities. To the two anonymous reviewers whose suggestions were very helpful to improve this paper.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The information gathered for this study was obtained from a project funded by CONICET, Argentina (PIP 0348). The “María Zambrano” Program is funded by the Next Generation EU Plan of the European Commission.