Trace-Element Analysis of Obsidian Sources and Artifacts of Central Chile (Maule River Basin) and Western Argentina (Colorado River)

Abstract

The present paper describes obsidian sources and compositional analysis performed on obsidian recovered from natural flows in the upper Maule River basin (central Chile). We compare the composition of this obsidian with that of obsidian artifacts recovered from selected archaeological sites both in the middle and lower valley of the Maule River and in the Argentinian provinces of Mendoza and Neuquén. The results indicate that the collected obsidian samples can be separated into six major groups. Most of the obsidian artifacts are assignable to a particular source area, but there still remain some unknown sources. We conclude that the Laguna del Maule source area was exploited from at least 50 A.D. onward and that the material was distributed to sites located more than 200 km from the source.