The Gravettian on the Basque Crossroads:a glimpse of Palaeolithic territoriality

Abstract

In recent decades, the Gravettian in the Basque Country has ceased to be a poorly known bridge between the Aurignacian and the Solutrean and has acquired its own personality. Progress in fieldwork and laboratory studies, the discovery of new sites in rock-shelters and in the open air, changes in the location pattern of the sites, and better knowledge of the lithic raw materials and their spatial distribution have greatly improved our understanding of the period. The main advances made since 1990 are described in this overview. At the present time, we are probably closer to describing territoriality in the Gravettian than for any other technocomplex in the region.

Upper Palaeolithic hunter–gatherer societies in the Basque Country (Iberian Peninsula) in the light of palaeoenvironmental dynamics in the last Glacial Period: cultural adaptations and the use of biotic resources

“…The case of open-air occupations, especially in the Gravettian, has been described above. Six camps, hunting posts or flint workshops are now known, which permits a fuller image of the use of the territory (Calvo, 2019; Arrizabalaga and Iriarte-Chiapusso, 2020; Calvo and Arrizabalaga, 2020). Indeed, although it is still difficult to conciliate the archaeological scale expressed in millennia with the historical scale of the groups or individuals who created the record, knowledge gained in the last decade has allowed us to consider the territorialisation of collectives.…”