Evidence of Social Interaction in the Pampas: The Case Study of Hangar Site (Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina)

Abstract

The Hangar site is located in the Pampas region and has a high relativeoccurrence of silicifed limestone, a raw material not available in the nearest outcrops usually exploited. The main objective of this chapter is to evaluate and discussthe frequency and use of this rock at Hangar. These data are compared and integrated with information from other sites where silicifed limestone is represented toanalyze its distribution in the region. We focus on the evidence of silicifed limestone in the site by analyzing the chaîne opératoire, together with the petrographicstudy of fve thin sections. We also conduct a bibliographic survey of the sites withsilicifed limestone in the Pampas. These data are used to construct fall-off curvesby plotting the proportion of silicifed limestone against the distance to the sources.Results indicate that the raw material found in Hangar comes from El Carancho, asource that is 340 km far from the site. These analyses allowed us to propose thatduring the fnal Late Holocene, there was an increased social interaction and abroadening of the territories of the hunter-gatherer bands that occupied the Pampas.