| Sumario: | This article undertakes a historical approach to the analysis of the construction of knowledge of lithic objects in archaeology in Argentina. First, the article reviews the inductivist method applied by the school of culture history in the 1940s. To describe this period, we emphasize the concept of industry, which is key to understanding the discipline’s approach at the time. Second, we discuss the incorporation of the New Archaeology as a global theoretical framework, which crystallized a period of normal science that saw observation, analysis, and description of lithic objects become hegemonic. Subsistence modes and the economy of the prehistoric populations were documented, as a priority, through quantitative variables. Finally, we describe the epistemological rupture that meant incorporating lithic material in a post-empiricist scenario of archaeological interpretation, where objects play an active role in the social life of past populations. In the conclusion, we maintain that currently, different epistemological approaches co-exist in lithic studies in Argentina. This is the product of a plurality of ontological conceptions of lithic material as an object of study. This plurality is experienced as part of research teams, where the early training of researchers takes place.
|
|---|