Intensive Archaeological Survey in the Upper Santa Cruz Basin, Southern Patagonia.

The article presents the preliminary conclusions of regionally oriented research that addresses the perceived lack of focus on the surrounding archaeological landscapes of Patagonia by including a focus on open-air sites as well as for distributional data on archaeological, taphonomic and lithic raw materials. The region of southern Patagonia that was investigated is the upper portion of the Santa Cruz Basin, including Lago Rico and Largo Argentino. It is proposed that the people using the area during the past 4,000 radiocarbon years were broad-ranging, reaching the Pacific coast. Preliminary research on the lithic artifacts from north and south of the Santa Cruz River provide no important typological, distributional or technological differences.