Late Pleistocene to early Holocene high-quality quartz crystal procurement from the Valiente quarry workshop site (32°S, Chile, South America)

Abstract

The procurement of high-quality lithic resources is amongst the most indicative processes of decision-making in the archaeology of early human groups peopling the Americas. Directly dated deposits from quarry workshops have been absent of the late Pleistocene record of South America. We present the results of the excavations of a high-quality translucent quartz crystal workshop that yielded radiocarbon-dated coherently layered stratigraphic deposits that shed light into the behavior of the initial stages of lithic procurement. Based on a detailed analysis of the context of the Valiente site (32° S, Chile, South America), we discuss the stages of bifacial production of point technology. The deposit produced evidence of cumulative occupations over the period between 12,630 and 11,320 calibrated years before present. This ~1,300-year span is coincidental with a major environmental step-wise drying trend as indicated by the local and regional pollen records. Furthermore, it is synchronous to the process in which natural landscapes became the earliest taskscapes in the region, thereby encompassing major cultural changes related to the organization of the land use. These results are discussed in the frame of contemporaneous archaeological data to discuss specific aspects of technology and decision-making of the earliest settlers of South America.

Paleoamerican Occupation, Stone Tools from the Cueva del Medio, and Considerations for the Late Pleistocene Archaeology in Southern South America

“…The spreading from northern South America might have been followed two main "routes": one through the Pacific slope and the Andean Cordillera in the west [186], and the other through Atlantic slope in the east [186,187]. In this scenario, despite it is located where the continent became narrower, and both "routes" may converge, in the colonization process of Patagonia, the FPs makers living at CM might belong to the major Pacific/Andean "route", and being one of the southernmost sites located in western South America witnessed by the finds of Salar Punta Negra [188], Quebrada Santa Julia [189], Valiente [190], Tagua-Tagua [191], and Salto Chico in Chile [167], and those FPs surficial finds performed in the Salta, Catamarca, Mendoza, Neuquén, and Río Negro provinces in Argentina (e.g., [192][193][194][195]).…”

New chronostratigraphic records of the early-to-middle Holocene in the north-central region of Chile indicate Andean foothills housed hunter-gatherers during pulses of extreme aridity

“…The sites correspond mainly to occupations in rock-shelters (Ampuero and Rivera, 1971; Escudero et al, 2016, 2017; Pascual et al, 2018). To a lesser extent, open-air sites characterized by the presence of human remains, have been recorded (Gomez and Pacheco, 2016; Méndez et al, 2018). A greater diversity of occupations has led different authors to suggest differentiations in site functions, including residential and logistical sites (Ampuero and Rivera, 1971; Escudero et al, 2017; Pascual et al, 2018; Pavlovic et al, 2012).…”

“…The initial peopling of north-central Chile begins toward the Terminal Pleistocene (13,000 cal BP) and is characterized by mobile hunter-gatherers (Jackson et al, 2007; Méndez, 2013). The peopling of the interior dates back to the Pleistocene-Holocene transition, even though fewer sites have been explored (Ampuero, 1969; Méndez et al, 2018a). A higher intensity of occupation has been detected since ca.…”

“…However, the archaeological characterization of this sector is based on few excavated sites (Ampuero and Rivera, 1971) and scarce survey coverage and has not been verified through systematic research. New deposits dating to the early-to-middle Holocene suggest that this supposed absence of archaeological records represents primarily a sampling bias (Méndez et al, 2018; Pascual et al, 2018; Pavlovic et al, 2012).…”

Bioavailable Strontium, Human Paleogeography, and Migrations in the Southern Andes: A Machine Learning and GIS Approach

“…Humans have occupied the coastal and mountain environments of the southern Andes of Argentina and Chile since the late Pleistocene (García, 2003;Méndez Melgar, 2013;Méndez et al, 2018). For most of the Holocene, mobile foraging was the dominant way of life, documented by a variety of hunting weapon systems, the consumption of diverse plant taxa such as algarrobo (Prosopis sp.)…”