The Rock Art of the Côa Valley (Portugal) and its Archaeological Context: First Results of Current Research

The Upper Palaeolithic of Europe

“…The analysis, with similar criteria, of settlement-subsistence systems in an even more southerly region -the Portuguese Estremadura -revealed a similar structural pattern (Zilhão 1997). The residential sites -open-air localities featuring lithic assemblages where all stages of the economy of stone tools can be recognised (procurement, production, use and discard) -are found along river valleys in the lowlands of the Tagus Basin and the littoral plain; on higher ground, cave sites were occupied logistically, as hunting stations (leaving behind artifact assemblages dominated by projectile points), or by small, all-ages groups (as denoted by the presence of children and adolescents among the Solutrean human remains from the cave site of Caldeirão; Trinkaus et al 2001), perhaps individual families, that exploited the immediate environment, presumably in the summer, for its seasonal products (leaving behind assemblages combining imported hunting weaponry and large amounts of expedient, non-retouched, de facto lake tools made out of locally available non-lint rocks, namely quartzite).…”

“…The evidence consists of animal and human igurines sculpted in bone, ivory and slate found at sites in Austria and southern Germany (Conard 2003), plus animal and geometric parietal engravings from a number of rock shelters in Southwest France, as well as, if their dating is accurate, the famous animal paintings from the Cave of Chauvet, in the Rhône Valley (Valladas et al 2001;Pettitt & Pike 2007). Although cognitive models have been put forward to explain this development, they are inconsistent with the empirical data , which are rather more suggestive of (a) those inds that so far have been made being but the tip of an iceberg extending across at least the entire areafrom Portugal to the Urals -covered by the associated archaeological culture (the Aurignacian II; see later in this chapter); (b) the evidence from caves and rock shelters being but a glimpse of a behaviour that impacted the entire landscape, as demonstrated by the slightly later open-air rock art sites from the Côa Valley, in Portugal (Zilhão et al 1997;Baptista 2009); this symbolic marking of territories representing in the irst place, as among ethnographic hunter-gatherers, the staking of property claims over a given geographical space and its resources (Gamble 1983;Gilman 1984;Layton 1992;Bahn & Vertut 1997).…”

“…Although the irst hypothesis cannot be rejected, the second is more likely, considering that two important features of the Solutrean are very relevant in this regard: (a) the greater plasticity of bifacial laking fosters much greater variation in point morphology than is possible when simply backing or trimming a blank, and (b) the easy recognition of such unique and characteristic point types allows the inclusion of even isolated occurrences in the distribution maps, thereby signiicantly increasing the spatial resolution of the analyses. Bearing this in mind, the combined evidence from stone tools and ornaments suggests the existence since at least the Early UP of a three-tier system of social networks (Zilhão 1997): the dialect tribe, revealed by the distribution of speciic Solutrean point types; the language area, apparent in the permanence over time, from the Aurignacian to the Gravettian, of macroregional clusters of personal-ornament types with the same approximate boundaries; and the techno-complex or culture area, relected in the vast supra-regional or even continentwide expanses over which stone-tool technologies spread and in the simultaneity with which they changed along similar lines across such vast expanses.…”

“…The emergence of the Gravettian, during GI 7, about thirtyive thousand years ago, is one of the least known periods of European Prehistory, but a gradual technological transition from the later Aurignacian can be envisaged (Zilhão 1997;Pesesse 2010). Basically, what is at stake is a comeback to arming projectile shafts with stone tips instead of bone tips, and the utilisation of the backing technique to shape blade and bladelet blanks into sharp points (Fig.…”

“…In 25,800-year-old level 2 of Lapa do Anecrial (Zilhão 1997;Almeida et al 2006;Brugal 2006), a short-term sojourn by a small group (most likely, an overnight camp involving three persons) left behind a faunal assemblage comprising 100% rabbit bones (1516, representing a minimum of ifteen individuals) that were in part consumed on site and in part skinned for their pelts. In slightly earlier, 27,200-year-old level EE15 of the Lagar Velho rock shelter (Almeida et al 2009), the remains distributed around two hearths also include some rabbits (12%) but are mostly red deer (68%), and the pattern of skeletal representation of the latter indicates on-site processing for the pelts and removal of the meat-bearing parts for consumption elsewhere.…”