ABSTRACT

Archaeologists know less about how hunter-gatherers and early agriculturists lived during the Archaic period in the Mexican Northwest compared to the U.S. Southwest. To evaluate Archaic period mobility, lithic technology, and regional and temporal patterns in raw material procurement in northwestern Chihuahua, Mexico, we characterized the trace elemental composition of 61 obsidian artifacts from Rancho Santa María I, II, and El Peñón del Diablo using energy-dispersive X-ray fluorescence spectrometry. People predominantly used Los Jagüeyes obsidian procured locally from secondary deposits, but they also used three additional sources from upland and lowland environments in the Mexican Northwest to make dart projectile points and debitage. Also, they reduced obsidian using bipolar percussion, and there is regional and temporal variation in obsidian source use. This study contributes new insights into how mobility, raw material availability, and nodule size affected lithic technological organization in an understudied region.

摘要

与美国西南部地区相比，考古学家对墨西哥西北部地区古代的狩猎采集者和早期农业工作者的生活知之甚少。为了评估墨西哥西北部奇瓦瓦州原材料采购中的古代时期流动性，石器技术以及区域和时间模式，我们利用能量分析法表征了来自兰乔·圣玛丽亚一世，二世和埃尔·佩农·德尔·暗黑破坏神的61种黑曜石文物的痕量元素组成。色散X射线荧光光谱法。人们主要使用从次要矿床本地采购的LosJagüeyes黑曜石，但他们还使用了墨西哥西北部高地和低地环境中的其他三种来源制成飞镖弹头并记入借方。而且，他们使用双极打击乐器减少了黑曜石，黑曜石来源的使用在地区和时间上都有差异。这项研究提供了新的见解，以了解在研究不足的地区，流动性，原料可用性和结核大小如何影响岩性技术组织。