Os artefatos líticos e suas utilidades entre os caçadores-coletores de Carajás

Abstract

The subject of hunter-gatherers in the Amazon region is still little known to the general public, and even in the scientific community there are few publications that tell us about these groups that lived several thousand years ago in prehistoric Amazonia, and that, in general, seem not to receive their due value. To try to get a better understanding of this theme, the study of the lithic material culture of these groups is one of the paths we can take to try to reconstruct their way of living and acting, for example, by analyzing the functionality of the lithic materials and the ways in which they were made. Through the study and analysis of lithic pieces from the archaeological sites of the Rato cave and Guarita, held in the technical reserve of the Goeldi Museum, along with the careful reading of reports about the lithic materials from these sites, complemented by the three dimensional drawing of the same, it was possible to reach some conclusions about the functions that these lithics were intended for and the ways they were made. The raw material used in the lithics found at these sites was predominantly quartz, divided into two large groups: rough and chipped pieces. The first is subdivided into unused raw pieces and used raw pieces. The second group is subdivided into bipolar nucleiforms, bipolar splinters, chipping residues, micro chipped pieces, and retouched pieces.