Abstract

CORTEGOSO, Valeria. Farmer's communities in Potrerillos Valley (Northwest of Mendoza, Argentina) during the late holocene: technological organization and housing. Intersecciones antropol. [online]. 2006, n.7, pp.77-94. ISSN 1850-373X.

The Río Blanco Basin (Mendoza, Argentina) contains environments characterized by great altitudinal differences. The diversity of evidence in the lithic record in areas with diverse geomorphological and resource structures could be related to the technological organization of the locating and/or the processing of stone tool production. The Potrerillos mountain valley (1400 m. above-sea-level) was intensively occupied during the late Holocene by farmers who occupied small semisubterranean houses (Gendarmería Casa 1 and 2). In Potrerillos a quarry-workshop of rhyolites and basalts (paleodunes) was examined. The inhabitants also exploited quarries of cryptocrystalline rocks located in the precordilleran western slope to the east of the valley. Two rock shelters (Los Conitos 01 and 02) show an occupation sequence of 2300 to 1000 ¹⁴C years BP. The evaluation of lithic materials according to their relative distance from the quarries enabled to follow sequences of production which may refer to specific episodes in different locations. These groups also articulated their economy with the extraction of wild resources, taking advantage of the warmer season in higher environments, mobility being restricted to the Basin with a semi-permanent settlement in the valley. Differences in the organizational properties of technological behaviour are related to factors such as population growth, changes in subsistence, and different settlement systems from the mid- to late Holocene. The process is basically an intensification in the exploitation of resources and a decrease in mobility.

Keywords : North of Mendoza; Farmers; Technological organization.

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