Abstract

SALGAN, María Laura; BERTOTTO, Gustavo Walter  and  MABEL GARRIDO, Mirta. Petrografía y procedencia de rocas silíceas en La Payunia (Malargüe, provincia de Mendoza). Intersecciones antropol. [online]. 2014, vol.15, n.2, pp.363-375. ISSN 1850-373X.

The lithic raw materials used by hunter gatherers who inhabited Payunia, Mendoza, Argentina, from the late Holocene are mainly siliceous rocks available in the region. Recent studies have helped to define two areas of abundant availability of siliceous rocks (North and South), and a central area where they are scarce. In order to make progress in the definition of a regional lithic resource base and to characterize the siliceous outcrops detected, quarries and archeological sites were sampled following macroscopic criteria. The goals of this paper are: 1) to present the petrographic characterization of available siliceous rocks in La Payunia; 2) to report on their spatial distribution; and 3) to discuss the scope of petrography for archaeological provenance studies in southern Mendoza. The results indicate that macroscopic and petrographic differences between quarries do not provide solid criteria for differentiation. However, petrographic studies do allow the environments of formation of these rocks to be inferred and areas of potential regional availability to be defined.

Keywords : Siliceous rocks; Provenance; Petrography; Geoarchaeology; Mendoza.

        · abstract in Spanish     · text in Spanish     · Spanish ( pdf )