Neighbours but diverse: social change in north-west Iberia during the transition from the Mesolithic to the Neolithic (5500—4000 cal bc)

Abstract

This chapter presents the available information on the late Mesolithic and the early Neolithic in north-west Iberia, and discusses its significance when attempting to understand the processes of transition from foraging to peasant societies. The north-west of the Iberian Peninsula provides, in a restricted area, a huge variety of Neolithization processes, probably interrelated, on an unequal background of Mesolithic populations, with great contrast between densely populated areas, such as the Cantabrian coast or the Upper Ebro, and others with lower densities. It is precisely in one of these densely populated areas that the first contacts appear to have happened. The evidence from Mendandia suggests that, about 5500 cal bc, not much later than the time when the first Neolithic groups were established on the Mediterranean coast, the first pottery could have reached the Upper Ebro. The earliest pots were probably no more than attractive prestige goods, which reached this area through exchange networks whose existence is proved by the presence of Mediterranean shells in the local Mesolithic.

Re-evaluating the Neolithic: The Impact and the Consolidation of Farming Practices in the Cantabrian Region (Northern Spain)

“…By the time domesticates arrived in the Cantabrian region, both the immediate east and south possessed plant domesticates as well (Peña-Chocarro et al 2005a;Peña-Chocarro 2007). In addition to the possible Mediterranean introduction of the Neolithic crop assemblage to the Iberian peninsula along the Ebro valley (Arias 2007), the Western Pyrenees have been suggested as a possible route of introduction, though this still needs to be tested (Zapata 2002, Zapata andZapata et al 2007).…”

“…The introduction of this funerary rite is now regarded as the last step in a complex neolithisation process which began in the first half of the fifth millennium, although evidence of contacts between other Neolithic groups in the Iberian peninsula and local Mesolithic groups has been found, dated to the last centuries of the sixth millennium (Arias 2007). Nonetheless, megalithism marks the great conquest of inland parts of the regions.…”

Late Mesolithic burials at Casa Corona (Villena, Spain): direct radiocarbon and palaeodietary evidence of the last forager populations in Eastern Iberia

“…At Cueva de los Canes, five stable isotopic determinations on three different individuals show a subsistence pattern dominated by terrestrial diets (Arias, 2007). Such results are mirrored at the site of Braña Arintero, where two adult individuals yielded no signal of marine protein input in their diets (Arias and Schulting, 2010).…”

La tecnología cerámica de los niveles IV y III en el yacimiento de Kobaederra (Cortézubi, Bizkaia). Aprovisionamiento y modificación de las materias primas

“…Los distintos proyectos de investigación se han centrado en precisar y establecer la aparición de las especies domésticas en la región Zapata 2002;Peña-Chocarro et al 2005; Altuna y Mariezkurrena 2009), en la cronología del proceso (Arias et al 2000), en los materiales cerá-micos (Alday 2003;Cubas 2008) y en el propio proceso de neolitización (Arias 2007;Arias et al 2000). Ello se ha visto favorecido por la excavación de nuevos depósitos como Los Canes (1), Los Gitanos (Ontañón 2005), El Mirón (González Morales y Straus 2000), Kobaederra (Zapata et al 1997) y Herriko Barra .…”