Paleomagnetic Results from the Urupez Paleoindian Site, Maldonado Department, Uruguay

Abstract

The Urupez site (34° 49′ 15″ S, 55° 19′ 02″ W) is located in the Tarariras Creek basin, ca. 300 m north of the Río de la Plata (Maldonado department, Republic of Uruguay, Figure 1A). Archaeological excavations yielded a remarkable buried Paleoindian record in a deposit with two stratigraphic levels named “I” and “II,” which belong to the same soil formation horizon (Figure 1B). Level I is dark gray homogeneous, compact, and plastic silty sand, and level II is yellowish brown highly compacted silty clay (Bossi 1983; Meneghin 2004). The Paleoindian level is ca. 5 cm thick and covers more than 100 m2 at the base of level I in contact with level II. The Paleoindian record is composed of lithic artifacts—mostly debitage—and diverse unifacial and bifacial flaked tools. Among them are two projectile points, one of which is a typical “fishtail” specimen (cf. Nami 2007:Fig. 7b–c). Two charcoal samples recovered 50 m distant from each other yielded the following AMS uncalibrated dates: 10,680 ± 60 (Beta-165076) and 11,690 ± 80 (Beta-211938) RCYBP (Meneghin 2004, 2006).