A Great Step Forward. Lithic Raw Material Procurement and Management among Palaeolithic Hunter-Gatherers in the Basque Crossroads

Abstract

This paper is divided into three sections. The first section describes the historiographic evolution of the study of prehistoric lithic raw materials in the Basque Crossroads (in the north of the Iberian Peninsula) during the last three decades. The second section explains the currently available information about geological outcrops of flint in the eastern end of the Cantabrian Mountain range (the Basque-Cantabrian Basin), the upper Ebro valley and both sides of the western Pyrenees, in the central part of the northern Iberian Peninsula, as that was the main raw material used by hunter-gatherer groups in the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. Finally, the last section describes the way in which progress in both aspects of research have enabled the introduction of new concepts and perspectives in the reconstruction of the social and economic dynamics of Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers. This has given rise to an innovative methodology that is able to address and solve important issues, particularly regarding mobility and territoriality patterns of those human groups, allowing the proposal of mobility and territoriality models that, while they will not match exactly the systems used by Upper Palaeolithic communities, represent significant progress in understanding the social and economic dynamics of hunter-gatherer groups.