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Most lithic industries associated with hunter-gatherer groups in Eastern South America, especially the ones with points present, date to the Early Holocene, with some minor industries and lithic points typologies persisting until the Middle Holocene and, more rarely, until the Late Holocene. This is the case for the Garivaldinense lithic industry associated points typologies. In this article we present the technological analysis of the points identified at the Pororó site, located in central Rio Grande do Sul State, Brazil. The site is an artificial mound dated to around 2,500 BP. We applied an established protocol for analysis of stemmed points considering metric, morphological and technological features that allowed us to classify the artefacts in typologies. We identified two types of points associated to the Garivaldinense lithic industry: the Montenegro and Garivaldinense types. We have also identified a new type that has never been described before and proposed to refer to it as the Pororó type. At least one Pay Paso point was identified at the site, although this type of point is not yet known at other sites of this region and chronology. The results indicate persistence of the Garivaldinense Culture from the Early to Late Holocene, as well as technological innovation during the Late Holocene. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The lack of a standard protocol for analyzing and comparing multiple assemblages of lithic artifacts has hindered the advance of a better understanding of the cultural diversity associated to prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups. This was the case of Brazilian archaeologists that for many decades associated lithic stemmed point assemblages to a cultural entity known as "Umbu Tradition". However, most associations of assemblages to this "tradition" have been made regardless of the type of lithic points, as well as ignoring other elements related to the lithic industry, settlement patterns, among others. As a result, since the 1980s, several studies have been questioning the validity of such Tradition. Recent research has proposed new definitions for the previously associated Umbu Tradition lithic industries based on the stemmed points typology. However, no raw data on the technological analysis of such points have ever been presented. This article proposes a protocol for the technological study of lithic points that allows the application of descriptive statistics and multivariate analysis to verify if these types present or not significant differences. We present new data on the technological analysis of 501 lithic points from sites located in the supposed Umbu Tradition coverage area and period, as well two new Early Holocene C14 dates for one of the studied sites (Caetetuba site). Our results corroborate previous propositions of discarding Umbu Tradition as a valid cultural entity, as well as new typologies for the points. We also show that our protocol is suitable to unravel potential cultural patterns regarding many attributes in lithic points as well as to explore if there are significant differences among previously defined types. Image 1 [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]