The Alca Obsidian Source: The Origin of Raw Material for Cuzco Type Obsidian Artifacts

Abstract

but at that time, only one group could be linked with samples said to come from a geological deposit of obsidian: the Quispisisa Source.These specimens were provided by Rogger Ravines from a quarry said to be near San Genaro in the south-central highlands of Peru.Five of the other types of obsidian, although not linked to' specific deposits, had distributions that were limited to particular regions in our sample; this patterning suggested possible areas in which the sources might be located and provided the basis for the provisional names of the major chemical types (i.e., Acari Type, Andahuaylas A Type, Andahuaylas B Type, Ayacucho Type, Pampas Type).Two types of obsidian with unknown sources were present at archaeological sites in more .than one region, and the provisional names of Cuzco Type and Titicaca Basin Type were assigned to them based on the areas where these chemical types most commonly occurred judging from our preliminary results.Of the obsidian artifacts analyzed in the initial study, the vast majority (81%) of the artifacts belonged to one of three groups: the Quispisisa Source, the Cuzco Type, and the Titicaca Basin Type.Artifacts of each of these three kinds of obsidian were distributed over a relatively broad geographical area, suggesting that obsidian from these sources was widely exchanged in pre-Hispanic times.Despite explorations by Burger in the summer of 1974, the collaboration of Peruvian and U.S. archaeologists, and the dissemination of the findings in Spanish and English, little progress was made in identifying the unknown

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 35 citations exist upstream.