Materias Primas Líticas y Manufactura de Instrumentos en Tres Localidades de la Costa Oeste del Golfo San Matías (Provincia de Río Negro, Argentina)

Abstract

The western coast of San Matías Gulf (Río Negro province, Argentina) has certain characteristics that make it environmentally and geologically different from the northern coast of the same Gulf. The archaeological project that has been initiated in the area aims to explore the dynamics of the human occupation in the area during Middle and Late Holocene, and to assess what role it played in relation to mobility and subsistence system of human populations that inhabited the region, including the study of the exploitation of lithic raw materials. This paper presents the results of the analysis of the tool assemblages from three archaeological localities on the West coast of the Gulf, in order to delineate the trends regarding the exploitation of lithic raw materials in the area. Index of reduction proposed by different authors are used together in order to detect general trends. The results show differences with respect to the lithic assemblages of the northern coast of the Gulf, mainly related to the use of dark fine-grained rocks, abundant in the North and almost absent in the West. Finally, no clear patterns were detected in regard to the intensity of reduction of different types of rocks, which is a wake-up call in regard to the usefulness of the use of different reduction index all together.