Heat Treatment and Changes in Siliceous Rock Quality in the Southern End of the Deseado Massif (Patagonia, Argentina)

ABSTRACT

The use of high-quality rocks and heat-treatment by hunter-gatherers during the initial exploration of America has been emphasized by different authors. Here we present the case of the Southern End of the Deseado Massif (Patagonia, Argentina), where human occupations have been dated from the Pleistocene-Holocene transition until historical times. An intense survey of lithic resources has shown the presence of primary and secondary sources of high quality siliceous rocks, most of them of hydrothermal origin. These siliceous rocks have a highly localized occurrence. In most cases, their quality does not match the one found at the archaeological record, which encompasses caches of artifacts, logistic and multiple activity sites. We present the results of heat treatment experiments on samples from local primary sources. Results obtained are compared with the artifacts found, in order to evaluate the potential utilization of the sources and the presence of heat treatment in the archaeological record.

KEYWORDS:

• Heat-treatment
• experimental archaeology
• hunter-gatherers archaeology
• Patagonia

Acknowledgments

We are especially grateful to Dan Amick, Philip Carr and Celeste Weitzel, who invited us to participate in the session “The role of experiments in lithic technology” of the 11th Symposium on Knappable Materials, where a preliminary version of this paper was presented. We want to thank Grant McCall for kindly inviting us to submit our paper to this journal, as well as Patrick Schmidt and the anonymous reviewer who helped us to improve the manuscript. Jennifer Baigorria and Patricia Llagostera provided the kilns and assisted us with the experimentation. The assessment of the mineralogical compositions and the microphotographies were done by the staff of the Geology area of the LEMIT-CIC for we are grateful to Ing. Traversa. We also wish to thank Brenda Gilio, Clara Compagno, Victoria Fiel and Pablo Bianchi, who took part on the samplings. María Laura Ciampagna gave us insightful comments for the discussion about native firewood. We also want to acknowledge the assistance of the managements of the Triton Mining Company S.A. and Piedra Grande S.A. mines (specially Claudio Iglesias, Ricardo Silva and Carolina Negre), and Gobernador Gregores authorities (Pablo Ramírez and Marcelo Cebeira). We also had the additional help of Mrs. María and the late Mrs. Betty, from 17 de Marzo ranch, the workers of Piedra Grande S.A. and all the people who took part of the fieldwork. The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, L. Vetrisano, upon reasonable request.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by ANPCyT (Project Pict 2015-2038).

Notes on contributors

Lucas Vetrisano

Lucas Vetrisano is a PhD student of the University of Buenos Aires and a fellow of the Conicet (Consejo nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas), at the IMHICIHU (Instituto Multidisciplinario de Historia y Ciencias Humanas). His interests in archeology are lithic studies, focusing on technological aspects and experimentation, especially in relation to cultural change. His current research work is centered on blade technology in relation to raw material quality in the Santa Cruz River basin, in the Argentinean Patagonia. He is also a member of archaeological projects which focus on the Chico and Santa Cruz River basins.

Nora Viviana Franco

Nora Viviana Franco is a Principal Researcher working at CONICET (Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas) and Professor at the University of Buenos Aires. She has completed her studies at the University of Buenos Aires, where she obtained a PhD in Archaeology. As part of her formation, she took lithic courses and was part of excavation teams outside of the country. She also won a short-term Fulbright fellow. As in specialist in lithic studies, focusing on hunter-gatherer’s societies, she has begun her career as a fellow of the University of Buenos Aires, working first in the Pampas and afterwards at the South of Patagonia. She completed her PhD on lithic analysis in the Upper Santa Cruz River and is now leading projects which focus on hunter-gatherer early peopling, behavior and mobility in the Santa Cruz and Chico river basins, Patagonia, Argentina. She has taught postgraduate courses on lithic analysis at Universities from Argentina and Uruguay. She is also director and co-director of fellows from the CONICET and University of Buenos Aires.