Broad-Spectrum Foraging, Trade, and Lithic Technology: A First Approach to the Slab Stone Tools from Prehispanic Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina

Abstract

The article presents the study of the slab stone tools collected at the San Roque locality (Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina), a poorly known tool type that merits more detailed studies. The assemblage was also analyzed from a technological-functional point of view, but the source of raw materials was also investigated to infer the range of past mobility and/or the size of trade networks. The major cost of tools was represented by the systematic acquisition of the raw material from the quarries located 25–200 km rather than by manufacturing. Technological attributes and use-wear on active edges suggest that they were broad-functional tools linked to the need for a broad-spectrum adaptative strategy that required diverse tools for processing a wide variety of foodstuff and their by-products. The landfall of crop plant cultivation ca. 1200 years BP, probably increased the need for this tool type, reinforcing pre-existent trade networks for raw material acquisition.