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Small artifacts among the hunter-gatherers of the southern La Plata Basin

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Abstract

Small artifacts and miniatures are reduced objects that can be connected to rituals, children’s activities, and small game. Material correlates can be established for the aforementioned hypotheses. In the southern end of the La Plata basin, small artifacts were recovered from different late Holocene hunter-gatherer archaeological sites, but their functional explanation is not clear. The aim of this paper is to discuss the presence of small artifacts in the regional record from the regular morphological groups of harpoon heads, atlatl hooks, lithic spheroids, and labrets. Firstly, we statistically evaluate the metrical structure of the complete sample to identify small size outliers. Secondly, we analyze the physical, morphological, and functional structure of the small artifacts to discuss if they are different from the regular sample in other properties rather than only the size. The results show that a reduced number of artifacts qualify as different from the regular sample, although variability among morphological groups is noticed in the raw material and use-wear patterns. In the case of harpoons and atlatl hooks, variable behaviors are recorded where children’s use is a possibility, but raw material mediated strategies and recycling of tools cannot be discarded. Labrets were intended for small people; and a lithic spheroid could have been made by a novice. Although no conclusive statement can be made because of the multiple nature of the archaeological record, our interpretations constitute a first approximation to the presence of children in the hunter-gatherer societies under study, which must be confronted through new studies and samples.

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Data Availability

Data supporting the findings of this study are available from corresponding author and at the supplementary materials. No digital repository exists.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Lic. Andres Gascue for the photograph of the small harpoon housed at the Museo Nacional de Antropología, Montevideo. We also thank Florencia Orio and Karla Saracay for improving the language in the English version. This work was supported by the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) PIP 11220200102940CO. Finally, we thank the three anonymous reviewers; their comments clarify the original version of this paper.

Funding

This work was supported by the National Council of Scientific and Technical Research (CONICET) PIP 11220200102940CO.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CONICET), Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Alejandro Acosta, Natacha Buc & Daniel Loponte

  2. Instituto Nacional de Antropología y Pensamiento Latinoamericano (INAPL), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Alejandro Acosta, Natacha Buc, Lucía T. Rombolá & Daniel Loponte

  3. Universidad de Buenos Aires (UBA), Ciudad Autónoma de Buenos Aires, Argentina

    Natacha Buc

Authors
  1. Alejandro Acosta
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  2. Natacha Buc
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  3. Lucía T. Rombolá
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  4. Daniel Loponte
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Contributions

A.A. and N.B. wrote the main manuscript text and prepared most of the figures. N.B. made metrical, morphological, and microscopic analysis. A.A. and N.B. made physical analysis for bone tools. D.L. corrected the original version and prepared statistical data. L.R. made harpoon measurements, edited the manuscript, and corrected the English version. All authors reviewed the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Natacha Buc.

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Acosta, A., Buc, N., Rombolá, L.T. et al. Small artifacts among the hunter-gatherers of the southern La Plata Basin. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 16, 29 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-023-01929-8

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