Upper Palaeolithic lithic raw material sourcing in Central and Northern Portugal as an aid to reconstructing hunter-gatherer societies

Bibliographic Data

ID9380649
AuthorsT Aubry (0000-0003-0071-3361, corresponding author), Cristina Gameiro (0000-0003-3521-3594, University of Lisbon), Javier Mangado Llach (Universitat de Barcelona), Luí (0000-0002-1022-6367), Luís Luís (0000-0003-2233-5752), Henrique Matias (0000-0003-3212-2902, University of Lisbon), Tiago Do Pereiro (0000-0003-2691-4583)
Year2016
Volume3
Issue2
Pages7-28
Publication date2016-09-15
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Lithic Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2055-0472 • E-ISSN: 2055-0472
PublisherUniversity of Edinburgh (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.2218/jls.v3i2.1436
OpenAlexW2529487937
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited14

We present the results of the study of lithic raw materials used in Upper Palaeolithic occupations preserved in caves, rockshelters and open-air sites from two different geological environments in Portugal. For the sites located in the Lusitanian Basin, flint or silcrete sources are easily available in close vicinity. The Côa Valley sites, located in the Iberian Massif, are within a geological environment where restricted fine-grained vein quartz and siliceous metamorphic rocks are available, but no flint or silcrete, even though both are present in the archaeological assemblages. Data from the two clusters of sites are compared with a third newly located site in the Lower Vouga valley, at the limit of the Iberian Massif with the Lusitanian Basin, where quartz vein raw material types are locally available and flint is about 40 kilometres distant. This study reveals prehistoric adaptations to these different geological contexts, with shorter networks for the Lusitanian basin sites contrasting with the long distance ones for the Côa Valley, and the Vouga site at an intermediary position. Finally, we propose that lithic raw material supply networks, defined by a GIS least-cost algorithm, could be used as a proxy not only for territoriality in the case of local and regional lithic raw material sources, but also to infer long-distance social networks between different Palaeolithic human groups, created and maintained to promote the access to asymmetrically distributed resources

Archaeology · Cave · Foreland basin · Geochemistry · Geography · Hunter-gatherer · Lithic technology · Massif · Metamorphic rock · Prehistory · Structural basin · Archaeological and Geological Studies · Evolution and Paleontology Studies · Pleistocene-Era Hominins and Archaeology · Geology · Paleontology

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