The land of the last hunter-gatherer

Discussing the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic requires a definition for the archaeological record. In the Ebro Basin the typical archaeological sites, rock shelters, have been considered in a simplified way as hunting grounds, but advances in research indicate that they were in fact multipurpose habitats with varied activities, tight control of resources and a comprehensive exploitation of the area. Our hypothesis is that Mesolithic societies were sedentary with a complex social organisation. For this reasons, we reject the concept of Mesolithic peoples with pottery which is applied to records which do not contain the whole Neolithic package. We know that versatility is one of the characteristics that defines these settlements whith a) all the steps in the lithic chaîne op eratoire, b) a wide variety of objects, c) the use for hunting, butchery, fur making, woodworking, bone, plants and so on. In terms of wildlife, the description of an individual animal as domestic is not always easy to extrapolate from anatomical criteria, but an in-depth analysis does not discard this possibility either in the rockshelters. The prehistory of the Ebro Basin seems to indicate that their historical narrative began in the transition towards a production economy: in the balance between the archaeological record and historical logic it makes sense to assess groundbreaking processes of Neolithisation in comparison with participatory models of local communities.

… Proceedings of the XV UISPP World …, 2008

Documenta Praehistorica, 2007

This paper deals with the chronological hiatus in the Neolithic sequence of the southern part of the Low Countries. It can at present only be bridged indirectly, by a detailed analysis of the situation prior to and after the gap. The focus in this paper is on the nature of the Neolithic and its relationship with possible native non-Neolithic populations. The results of this analysis show the transition process to have been more than a simple and unidirectional 'Neolithisation'.

Zeitschrift für Geomorphologie, Suppl.

Mining and Quarrying in Neolithic Europe

During the Mesolithic and Neolithic, rock sources were exploited for a number of purposes, the most basic one obviously to obtain rock to make tools. There are numerous types of quarries and procurement sites will differ based on the geological deposit exploited for the required artefact, such as mining blocks of rock in a diabase dyke for adze material or exploiting an exposed vein of quartzite for smaller blanks to make flake and blade tools in the mountains. Hence, the type of blanks sought after in prehistory will influence the size and scale of any quarry site, as do varying topography, and geology. All of this makes a comparative study of quarries challenging. However, lithic procurement is also the result of a long chain of actions, deliberate choices, and preferences, i�e� procurement and quarrying are socially situated practices. With this as a premise, quarrying can be regarded as distinguishing as it pertains to technology, styles or morphology, as cultural markers of regional or local social groups or communities. The clue to understanding quarries is to differentiate the 'phenomenon' by focusing on the task of lithic procurement and quarrying. The methodology of the chaîne opératoire, is used to identify expressions of cultural or social affinity intertwined in technology and the production of artefacts (e�g� . The fundamental interpretative premise in such analyses is that all actions are socially, culturally and historically situated. A defined group's habits of mind and body are reflected in identified preferences in the execution of different gestures, tasks or technologies. Hence, anthropologists and sociologists underline the social nature of all actions as the habitus of a society, visible in how individuals or groups perform any act, routine, technique and tradition. Furthermore, the memories, knowledge and know-how of a social collective are also tacitly maintained, reaffirmed and transferred through continuous performance. Part of this is an acknowledgement of the implications of differentiated distribution and communication of knowledge for social organisation. Thus, quarrying and preferences in lithic procurement practices can be regarded as a type of 'knowledge that must have its wellsprings in individual experience yet becomes to a large extent conventional in social circles [through certain processes] whereby these conventional bodies of knowledge assume their locally characteristic shapes' (Barth 2002, 2). While knowledge, know-how or preference sometimes can be hard to verbalise, studies of what people did, how they acted, persisting or changing practices, and what they left behind, serve as a portal to identifying the existence of preferences and know-how. The methodology of the chaîne opératoire and inherent theoretical premises are by no means new in quarry studies. For example, among the waste material at quarry sites at Great Langdale in England, remains of tool production were identified and interpreted . Bradley and Edmonds claimed that inaccessible places were preferentially used for quarrying raw materials, and for the manufacture of the Langdale axes, the place of quarrying was considered as important as the rock procured. My approach agrees with theirs, but it also deviates due to my comparative investigation and the involvement of a wider range of site types. I investigated and compared the time period of activity and scale of exploitation in 21 quarries. This included examining the material at the quarries, as well as examining assemblages on related workshop and settlement sites (Nyland 2016a). I found that there were spatial and or temporal variations in the

2011

Two hut structures from an early Mesolithic site at Alyst, (Denmark) – A preliminary report In the period from 1998 2005 the Museum of Bornholm undertook a large scale rescue excavation campaign at the Maglemose settlement complex at Alyst. The investigations revealed a settlement complex with at least 26 flint concentrations and two hut structures from the Early Mesolithic. The two hut structures and adjacent activity areas are presented along with recently obtained 14C dates. The lithic artefacts from the huts show a high degree of tool diversity when compared with the lithic artefacts from the other units at the site, and the two hut structures seem to represent another aspect of the internal settlement pattern of the site. Most of the other units have been interpreted, on the basis of their lithic remains, as short term transit, hunting and fishing camps, whereas the huts indicate a more long term settlement strategy. It is argued that the Mesolithic habitation and activity area...

The Journal of Island and Coastal Archaeology, 2009

-In the southern French Massif Central and on its southeastern border but at different altitudes, open-air sites, rock-shelters and caves have yielded artefacts ranging from isolated finds to abundant series that date from MIS 9 to at least MIS 3, representing Lower Palaeolithic (sensu Acheulean bifacial production) and diverse Middle Palaeolithic facies. From the upstream part of the gorges of the Allier and Loire Rivers to the Chassezac and Ardèche Rivers surveys, excavations and detailed analyses of the material from these sites offer data on subsistence behaviours including among others raw material acquisition, lithic reduction sequences, hunted species and carcass treatment. This information has been gathered during a Collective Research Program (PCR Espaces et subsistance au Paléolithique moyen dans le sud du Massif central) and enables discussion of the mobility of human groups, the size of the territory they occupied, duration of site occupation, landscape cognition and resource exploitation and allows some speculation about the way these humans perceived the landscape in which they lived and how these ethnographic perceptions may have changed over time.