ANDEAN PAST - Latin American Studies Program - Cornell University

17~Dilleha,& Rossen:NanchocLithicTraditionTable6: Rawmaterialtypesof thelithictoolsampleanal,:tedfor microscopicuse~wearMaterial Code FT Percentbasalt 1 40 44.0quartzite 2 1 1.1andesite 3 3 3.3silex-coffee 6 2 2.2rhyolite 10 12 .13.2quartz crystal. 12 1 1.1quartz crystal 13 1 1.1silex-black 16 3 3.3granite 18 1 1.1tUff 19 19 20.9silex-gJ;ay 21 1 1.1diorite 22 7 7.7.--------------------Toeal 91 100.0Material use,action,and residues.As a total assemblage, estimated materialuse for microscopically analyzedlithics showsthe dominance of tools used on vegetal materi~als, probably wood and soft plants (Table 7).The specific "soft plant" and lessspecific "soft"category (that may also include very soft hide)togethc,=:r comprise 25.3% (n=23) of the edges.Only the "medium~to~hard" category, mostlikely representing woodworking, has a fre~quency representation close to the soft catego~ries, with 13.2% (n= 12). The remaining speci~men edges are split between lowfrequencies of"soft~to~medium"(n=5), meat/hide (n=4) ,softwood (n=3), soil (n=3), bone (n=3), freshmeat (n=l), "hard" (representing bone or hardwood) (n=l) , and "unknown substance"(n=2).More than a third of the edges (n=34) werecategorized as indeterminate or without use~wear. This last reflects several conditions,including (1) the complexity of use,wear analy~sis, (2) the special conditions required to pro~duce use~wear, (3) the probable existence ofmulti~functionaltoolsin the sample,and (4) theloss of use~wear through edge breakage andretouch. Despite these problems,the predomi~nance of estimated plant and wooduse~wearonthese edges is in agreement with (1) the typo~logical analysisof the NLT, (2) the substantialpresence of grinding stones at these sites(Rossen 1991), and (3) the typologicalobserva~tions of other researchers who have discussedunifaciallithic industries (Malpass1983;Ranere1978;Richardson 1969;Stothert 1974). Simul~taneously,Table 7demonstrates that despitethedominance of plant and wood oriented activj~ties, a broad spectrum of other activities is aJsorepresented.Table 7: Determinationsof estimatedmaterialuse. from theuse~wearanal,sisSiteCA09-27softplant 8medium-to-hard 6soft 2soft-to-medium 3meat/hide 2softwood 3soil 0boneifreshmeat 0hard 1unlcnownsubstance 1indeterminatelnot used 13Total 41CA09-2852311o21o1531CA09-52Toral2 IS4 123 81 51 40 31 30 31 10 10 26 419 91In terms of action, the dominance of plant~oriented activities is again evident in the rela~tively high frequency of cutting specimens,which constitute 22.6% (n=21) ofthe specimenedges (Table 8).Plant cutting may refer to a variety of activi~ties ranging from wild plant exploitation andprocessing to garden plot clearing, plant har~vesting, and production of wooden tools. Otherharder materials such as hard wood and bonemay also have been cut. Second in terms ofpercentage and frequency is scraping, whichmay represent various materials, with 12.1%(n=11) of edge specimens. Lowfrequenciesofsawing (n=4), boring (n=3), chopping (n=2)hafting (n=2), and scoring (n=2) againdisplaythe variety of activities represented in theassemblage.