Abstract

The significant variety, abundance and quality of the fine grained lithic resources observed in the exploratory surveys on upper Chacabuco basin (region de Aisén, Chile), together with the differences in treatment applied to them, suggest a low rate of prehistoric usage. The proximity to good raw material sources (lake Posadas and Pampa del Asador, Argentina) lead to questioning management of those locations in the network of procurement of rocks by the different groups who inhabited the area. The paper is a methodological proposal for the study of fine raw material reduction intensity, applied to surface distributions. The evidence -retouched and unretouched artifacts- was evaluated by quantitative and qualitative approaches, focused on technological variables.