Bone Tools at the Late Pre-Hispanic Site Boyo Paso 2 (Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina)

Abstract

The aim of the article is to assess the role played by bone tools at Boyo Paso 2 (Sierras of Córdoba, Argentina), an open-air site interpreted as a basecamp seasonally occupied by mobile mixed foraging and farming people c. 900–700 years BP. The results suggest that diverse activities were carried out on-site, including hunting or warfare, tool production, food processing and rituals. Bone tool analysis may enable reconstruction of the technological level, social organization, and cultural attitude towards the environment among people neither wholly foragers nor wholly farmers, a category for which archaeology currently lacks sufficient archaeological understanding and that merits further research.

Keywords

• South America
• Late Holocene
• bone tool technology
• raw material
• mixed foraging and cultivation economies