Article ID Journal Published Year Pages File Type
5113721 Quaternary International 2016 11 Pages PDF
Abstract
Our objective is to infer the territory of resources exploitation, landscape, and economic patterns. Raw material sources are usually fixed points on the landscape (in contrast to other resources such as fauna and flora) and, therefore, are one of the best ways of understanding how people moved in the landscape and, consequently, to infer past human behavior. We used a macroscopic approach in both the archaeological and the geological record in order to correlate sources and artifacts. Despite the absence of detailed quantitative data on each chert type, our results show that the hunter-gatherers who occupied Vale Boi during the Upper Paleolithic not only used several raw materials but also a variety of sources of the same raw material. This happened both diachronically and synchronically, suggesting that not only the complete sequence as well as each archaeological layer seem to have had a considerable economic complexity with the use of adjacent and distal sources. With this paper, we aim to present updated information on the variability of raw materials at Vale Boi, including the chert assemblages, along with new chert sources in order to establish a basis for a future detailed study on the raw material sourcing at the site.
Related Topics
Physical Sciences and Engineering Earth and Planetary Sciences Geology
Authors
, , , , , , ,