There and back again: Late Mesolithic technological change in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula

Abstract

A profound change took place in the lithic technology of the last hunter-gatherer societies in Western Europe and North Africa at the end of the Early Holocene. In a short period, several technological innovations were adopted in geographically, socially and culturally different contexts; a situation that raises many questions about the mechanisms that enabled this successful expansion and acceptance. In this paper, we propose a regional approach to the phenomenon. In the northeast of Iberia, the Ebro valley is one of the areas with the most records from the Late Mesolithic (Geometric Mesolithic or GM) as well as from the immediately previous phase (Notched and Denticulate Mesolithic or NDM). This study explores on exploring the main technological characteristics of both phases, as well as their chronological development, to analyse when and how the change occurred. For this purpose, we have reviewed the lithic industry, the stratigraphic sequences and the chronology of more than fifty archaeological levels. The results obtained highlight the technological distance between the two industrial traditions, where the GM innovations burst into the Ebro valley when the NDM technology was still active. However, we consider that the adoption of the new technology would take place through the socio-territorial structures of the NDM. This hypothesis is based on the recognition of continuity in the territorial occupation, as well as the identification of technological practices typical of the NDM that persist in GM lithic assemblages.