First approach to the grinding artifacts of the southeast of Colhué Huapi lake (Chubut, Argentina)

Abstract

The Sarmiento Basin (Chubut, Argentina) has offered a privileged environment for the development of human life over the Holocene. For decades it was considered that the groups that inhabited this area based their economy on the hunting of terrestrial mammals, mainly Lama guanicoe. However, the new evidence suggests a diversification in the economy at particular times, adding new resources, technologies and/or ways of processing them. Within this framework, the goal of this work was to carry out a first characterization of grinding artifacts found at the southeast of the Colhué Huapi lake. For this purpose, distributional and spatial arrangement were analyzed, as well as dimensional, state of conservation and general techno-morphological variables. The results warn of a high number of active and passive artifacts made with local raw materials, whose diversity of shapes, weights, and states of conservation suggest a heavy equipment of space. Added to other technologies —such as ceramics and specific artifacts for fishing—, they would indicate an intensification in the use of resources towards the end of the late Holocene, suggesting as well an important place for grinding practices in the life of the hunter-gatherers who inhabited this area.