Knives, canoes, and invisible technologies : A use-wear analysis of shell tools from southern Patagonia

The archipelagos of southwestern Patagonia were historically inhabited by hunter-gatherer societies characterized by a maritime-oriented lifeway and a knowledge of navigation techniques. These canoeros societies inhabited this extensive territory from approximately 7500 years BP until the processes of social disintegration and ethnocide that took place during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The use of shells as tools constituted a distinctive behavioral trait among these groups, and as such, is well documented in ethnographic sources. Nonetheless, archaeological investigation of this practice has remained limited, due in part to the rarity of shell tools in the archaeological record and the inherent difficulty of detecting the use of unmodified shells. This study addresses this historical gap through a use-wear analysis of unmodified shells recovered from several archaeological sites, in addition to three ethnographic artifacts, including a manufactured shell knife. The results indicate that some of these shells—typically classified as food refuse, as they are an integral part of the shell middens—were in fact tools, used primarily for skin scraping, in four out of the five archaeological sites examined. These include middle and late Holocene sites from both the Beagle Channel and the Magallanes region. Moreover, ethnographic collections have enabled the examination of unmodified shell tools, retouched shell implements, and hafted knives originating from territories inhabited by both the Yagan and Kawésqar societies. These ethnographic tools were also primarily associated with skin processing, although they exhibit a considerably longer period of use compared to the archaeological ones. The combination of ethnohistorical and ethnographic sources with the application of archaeological methodologies to the analysis of both ethnographic and archaeological assemblages has enabled a better understanding of the role shell tools played in these societies, as well as a direct assessment of the strengths and limitations inherent to each of these disciplinary approaches.