Short lithic reduction in the Itapeva refuge, São Paulo, Brazil

The lithic industry of the Itapeva refuge, located southeast of SP, Brazil, was examined. The physical and technical attributes were checked on 3,168 pieces with the aim of creating groupings and statistically verifying their relevance from the point of view of the intersection between them. The study focuses on knapping and the quality of the raw material to determine the supposed little technical transformation of the lithic supports used. The conclusion is that there are knapping processes that can be detected through statistical analyzes of knapping sequences considered short and random, suggesting the hypothesis that lithic industries called expedients have standardized reduction that are connected to a series of knapping methods in raw materials of variable quality, with no drop in technical execution based on random knapping.