The Pleistocene of Rabat (Morocco): Mollusks, Coastal Environments and Human Behavior

Shellfish resilience to prehistoric human consumption in the southern Red Sea: Variability in Conomurex fasciatus across time and space

“…These likely influenced the local ecologies of marine molluscs. The variety of impacts that the geomorphology of the shoreline has on shellfish abundance has been shown before in the context of reconstructing past human coastal ecologies (Fa, 2008;De Vynck et al, 2016, 2019Chakroun et al, 2017). In our dataset, we see similar importance for growth rates of grazing molluscs, with larger specimens (and thus larger calorific value) in areas of extensive shallow water areas.…”

Last Interglacial Iberian Neandertals as fisher-hunter-gatherers

“…In the Mediterranean basin, bivalve shell was used for functional purposes (13)(14)(15), but low productivity may explain why shellfish consumption did not result in the formation of Middle Paleolithic shell middens; such accumulations are rare even in the regional Holocene, when the isotope evidence corroborates the minor role played by marine foods in hunter-gatherer subsistence (16,17). Under this productivity explanation, one would expect things to be different in the marine resource-rich shores of the North Atlantic, as is indeed suggested by the documented consumption of shellfish at a string of Last Interglacial sites in Morocco (18). However, modern humans are assumed to be behind the formation of the Maghreb's record and so it is the absence of Middle Paleolithic shell middens in the Atlantic coasts of Europe inhabited by Neandertals that is claimed to be of special significance (8).…”

Similarities and differences in the lifestyles of populations using mode 3 technology in North Africa and the south of the Iberian Peninsula

“…In addition to the similarity of the lithic technology found in the northern and southern shores of the Strait of Gibraltar, we want to highlight that the exploitation of marine resources appears to have been very similar in South Iberia (Finlayson et al, 2006;Finlayson, 2008Finlayson, , 2009Stringer et al, 2008;Zilhao et al, 2010;Colonese et al, 2011;Cortés et al, 2011), and North Africa, as shown by the evidence found in Benzú (Cantillo et al, 2010;Cantillo, 2015;Ramos-Muñoz et al, 2016 b), and other sites in the region, such as Ifri n'Ammar (Nami and Moser, 2010), Grotte de Pigeons, in Taforalt (D'Errico et al, 2009) and the caves in the region Rabat-Temara (Nespoulet et al, 2008 a;El Hajraoui et al, 2016;Campmas, 2017;Campmas et al, 2015Campmas et al, , 2016Chakroun et al, 2017).…”