The Early Neolithic in Northern Iberia

Iberia. Protohistory of the far west of Europe. From Neolithic to Roman conquest., 2014

Interpretative approaches gathering archaeological and carpological data with broad palaeoecological data can provide relevant insights on the relation between environmental changes and the evolution of human societies and their agricultural systems. Northwest Iberia stands as good study-case since abundant palaeoenvironmental studies allow us to understand the major trends in climate, vegetation, erosion events and even atmospheric pollution during the Middle and Late Holocene. This diverse and profuse array of information provides an excellent data-set to contrast with the regional archaeological and archaeobotanical records. The main focus of this presentation will be the carpological data available for northwest Iberia, including unpublished material. Carpological data from late prehistoric and protohistoric sites allowed the identification of key-moments in agricultural history, namely regarding the introduction of some crops and the development of new social-ecological systems. These keymoments include the Middle/Late Bronze Age (c. 1800 – 700/600 BC) and the Iron Age (700/600 BC to the1 st century BC) and correspond to significant changes in Human societies as suggested by data regarding the evolution of settlement, technology and demography, among other features. Developments in storage facilities are also recorded. Especially, underground storage (pits), that proved to be an important strategy for long-term preservation. Moreover, the palaeoenvironmental records suggest significant changes on several levels such as climate and forest cover. Increasing erosion events occur as the result of anthropogenic deforestation to obtain farmland and pasture. Besides their clear differences, these two important moments revealed important economic and social changes. Human communities became sedentary and a process of territorialization took place, enhancing the connection between settlements in Northwest Iberia, a region where good agricultural soils are not abundant. In the first moment (Middle/Late Bronze Age), the oldest evidence of millet, (Panicum milliaceum), a spring crop, suggests changes in agricultural practices and territorial strategies. During the Iron Age, an agricultural system based on a diversity of crops, namely different cereals, existed. In particular, hulled wheats (Triticum dicoccum and Triticum spelta) which were good choices for undemanding and erosive soils. These different environmental and archaeological records will be presented in order to address the main changes in land cover and land use, namely their relation with the evolution of agricultural strategies and social-ecological systems in Northwest Iberia.

2004

The spread of agriculture in the Iberian Peninsula is documented from at least ca. 5600–5500 BC, although botanical data are absent or very limited for large areas. Archaeobotanical information shows from the beginning an imported agrarian system with a great diversity of crops: hulled and naked wheats and barleys, legumes such as pea, lentil, fava bean, vetches and grass peas, flax and poppy. This diversity of plants with different requirements, processing and uses, implies that the first farmers quickly imported or acquired a wide range of agrarian knowledge. Regional and inter-site agrarian differences are discussed in relation to factors like ecology, culture, use of the cultivated plants and management of the risk of crop failure. The adoption of farming resulted in significant ecological, economic, dietary, and social changes for the Neolithic people of Iberia.

Quaternary International, 2018

This paper is a state-of-art of the Neolithisation process and Early Neolithic in Iberia's inlands, specifically in the mid and upper Ebro Valley and Central Meseta of Spain. Firstly, a historiographical review of the hypothesis and models of the last decades are presented. In this section, the paper shows that the main theoretical concepts and ideas remain similar for a long time ago but they are nuanced by the last data and analysis. Next, these new data and revisions are analysed, in particular the existence of Neolithic settler pioneer communities and " Mesolithic context with Neolithic elements " , the role of colonization phenomena (DNA analysis, leapfrog colonization and landscape occupation), the pottery studies like main interpretative tool and, finally, the variable of rock art. The chronology is reviewed in the last section.

Vegetation history and …, 2005

This paper presents archaeobotanical results from the Neolithic levels (5,300–4,000 b.c.) of two recently excavated sites in northern Iberia: El Mirón cave (Cantabria) and the open-air site of Los Cascajos (Navarra). A cereal grain from El Mirón is currently the earliest domesticated plant remain from this region. Despite the large number of samples examined, plant remains are few. They include basically cereals (Triticum monococcum, T. dicoccum, T. aestivum/durum/turgidum and Hordeum vulgare) and some nuts and fruits (Corylus avellana, Quercus sp., Vitis sp., etc.). The presence of free-threshing wheats at El Mirn opens up an interesting subject for debate, as until now naked wheats have been absent from the early Neolithic archaeobotanical record of the coastal Cantabrian region. Hulled wheat chaff is the main plant component from Los Cascajos, south of the Cantabrian Cordillera in Navarra, indicating waste from processing activities. The association of barley almost exclusively with both a burial and a ritual vase in Los Cascajos could be related specific rituals or ceremonies.

The Western Mediterranean, spanning southern Italy to Portugal, can be considered a single archaeological unit where the diagnostic characteristics of Early Neolithic contexts share common elements, marked by the spread of Cardium-Impressed ceramics. Although some consensus exists regarding the origin of these wares in southern Italy, the debate surrounding its process of expansion to the west remains open. Iberia is a key region for the analysis of the neolithisation process due to its location at the end of the Neolithic Mediterranean expansion. This view includes the problems linked with the mechanism of this spread and the evolutionary dynamics of the early agricultural societies. Our goals are to evaluate the rich archaeological and palaeoenvironmental database produced by recent decades of research in this area in order to address issues related to the Neolithic Transition. We especially deal with the role played by climatic events in the observed dynamics of the last Mesolithic and the Early Neolithic (ca. 8500–6900 cal BP).

Documenta Praehistorica, 2015

Here we discuss the importance of using the rich and growing database of high-precision, audited radiocarbon dates for high-resolution bottom-up modelling to focus on problems concerning the spread of the Neolithic in the Iberia. We also compare the spread of the Late Mesolithic (so-called Geometric) and the Early Neolithic using our modelling environment. Our results suggest that the source of radiocarbon data used to evaluate alternative hypotheses plays an important role in the results and open up new lines of research for the future.

Suplemento cultural Diario el Caribe, 2023

Reseñas del libro DOMINAR LOS OCEANOS CIENCIA Y NAVEGACIÓN EN LOS SIGLOS XVI-XVIII