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The landscape of Deseado Massif in Santa Cruz province, is dominated by Jurassic volcanic geologic formations. In this geologic framework, good quality lithic raw material has a great availability and variability. Regional archaeological record presents a long human occupation sequence starting in late Pleistocene. In this paper, neutron activation analysis is implemented to characterize geochemical variability in Cantera del Rojo (CDR) and other lithic quarries within the study area. In turn, the technique is applied on archaeological artifacts from Cueva Maripe site to evaluate raw material sources. Neutron activation analysis has been frequently used on obsidian, but very rarely on other kind of rocks. Thus, this paper constitutes the first application of this methodology to identify provisioning sources of different silica rocks. Results indicate statistically significant associations between one of the quarries (CDR), which allow us to establish a geochemical identity. The Cueva Maripe site artifacts analyzed were manufactured on raw materials sourced from D9 quarry and from another unknown source. This is the first application of neutron activation analysis to the study of silica rocks to resolve archaeological problems, so it represents a landmark on the raw material provenance studies in Argentina. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses a collection of engraved plaques from Golfo San Matías (Río Negro province) in order to assess design recurrences which might point to the presence of ornamentation rules and/or visual information coding among the hunter-gatherer peoples who produced and used them. Then, 170 plaques from Patagonia and other regions of Argentina are systematically compared using the presence of shared motif types as the main criterion. Data are assessed using a theoretical model with expectations which link design variability/standardization, ornamental laxity/structuration and informational heterogeneity/redundancy. Results show that plaques display low design standardization, which is compatible with a low redundancy communicative function (heterogeneous content) and/or with an ornamental function with lax rules. Moreover, the shared repertoires document several inter-regional links, which are verified using different lines of archaeological evidence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]