The Guinardera quarry (Sant Martí de Tous, Barcelona): A new chert exploitation location during historical times

Abstract

In 2014, an anthropic accumulation of chert material was discovered in La Guinardera area, at the southwest of the Sant Martí de Tous town (Barcelona, NE Iberian Peninsula). In 2018 a first archaeological intervention was carried out in two locations: La Guinardera and La Guinardera Nord. After the fieldworks, these two accumulations were interpreted as chert workshops. These workshops are in the St. Genís Formation, included within La Noguera lacustrine system and dated to the Priabonian age (upper Eocene). The St. Martí de Tous area presents shallow lacustrine conditions typical of sabkha environments, in which layers of gypsums and sandy lutites are interspersed with tabular red sandstone levels, yielding different varieties of chert.
 The Guinardera chert is characterized by a fairly homogeneous matrix, presenting a fine texture, with a microcrystalline and spherulitic length-slow chalcedony matrix, and a combination of grey colours, in general of dark hues, with an opaque diaphaneity but translucent at the edges.
 The archaeological assemblage from La Guinardera Nord site allows us to identify a chert workshop for the production of gunflints. The heterogeneity of the assemblage at La Guinardera site precludes assigning it to any single chrono-cultural period or function.
 The technological characterization of La Guinardera Nord site reveals distinctive attributes of a gunflint workshop that can be differentiated from prehistoric workshops. The presence of square and thick preforms, oxide traces on butts and ventral faces, marked bulbs and thick platforms, together with fresh edges on flakes and blades and the near-absence of patinated materials, corroborate it.
 The presence of these two deposits within the above-mentioned formation shows us a repeated landscape exploitation pattern for raw material extraction, since references chert use range from the Middle Palaeolithic (e.g., Abric Romaní) to historical times (e.g., La Guinardera Nord).

Virtual Trip to the Abric Romaní site and its lithic procurement areas

“…(2) the Sant Martí de Tous outcrops in the homonym municipality and; (3) the chert workshop of La Guinardera and a recently discovered Mesolithic -Neolithic sequence, Cal Sitjo, both in the town of Sant Martí de Tous (Barcelona). These locations are evidence of an intense and diachronic occupation of the area due to the chert abundance and availability for procurement and have already been discussed in this and previous volumes (Gómez de Soler et al 2021;Gómez de Soler et al 2023a).…”

“…Between the chert outcrops of Guinardera-02 and Guinardera-03, we localised and excavated two chert workshops: the Guinardera workshop (from different chronologies) and the Guinardera Nord workshop (for the configuration of gunflints). The two workshops are located on two different slopes on a small hill, named 'Serral dels Concos', 300 m apart from each other (Gómez de Soler et al 2021).…”

Cal Sitjo: A new Mesolithic to Neolithic sequence in a chert-rich region (Sant Martí de Tous, NE Iberia)

“…In this paper, we present the preliminary results of the excavation of the Cal Sitjo site (Sant Martí de Tous, Barcelona), a sequence of more than 8 metres with Mesolithic and Neolithic levels located in the Anoia basin (NE Iberian Peninsula). The area is characterised as a region with a great abundance of abiotic resources, mainly chert, which has been widely exploited throughout prehistoric times, from at least the Middle Palaeolithic to the present day (Gómez de Soler et al 2020;Gómez de Soler et al 2021).…”

“…The first surveying campaigns were executed for the development of a master's and a PhD thesis (2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015) (Gómez de Soler 2009; Gómez de Soler 2016: Chapters 7,8 & 9) and focused on documenting these rock outcrops to the greatest extent possible, as well as on identifying possible quarries and workshops (2018)(2019). We subsequently documented and excavated some of these quarries (Gómez de Soler et al 2021), and finally excavated a settlement related to the abundance of chert in the territory (2020-present).…”