E BALAS PERDIDAS Y VIDRIOS ROTOS: DISTRIBUCIÓN ESPACIAL DE ARTEFACTOS SUPERFICIALES EN EL FUERTE GENERAL PAZ (1869-1876)

Abstract

Fort General Paz functioned as the headquarters of the Western Frontier ofBuenos Aires between 1869 and 1876. It played an active role in contemporaryfrontier events, becoming a borderland enclave where a complex community madeup of a diversity of social actors developed. We present in this paper an analysis ofthe spatial distribution of surface artifacts, recovered as part of a programme ofsystematic surface collection carried out at the site in 2006. This was implementedto obtain relevant empirical information about the layout and spatial organizationof the fort in order to complement the available documentary sources (contemporarymilitary map and reports), as well as the information recovered through otherarchaeological techniques (test excavations, geophysical survey). Categories ofartifacts with diagnostic temporal and functional value were selected (e.g. military,construction and architecture-related artifacts; glass fragments of different colorand types) and, based on their spatial distribution, we identified the possible locationareas of some of the fort’s main buildings, potential activity areas and refuse dumps.Likewise, the analysis showed that the artifact assemblage largely corresponds tothe historically reported time of existence of the fort, implying that there was not asignificant occupation of the site after the frontier headquarters was moved to anew emplacement further west in the late 1870’s.

Keywords

• frontier
• fort
• systematic surface collection
• spatial patterning