Approach to the blade technology analysis of the Upper Palaeolithic site of “Tajos de Marchales” (Granada, Spain)

Abstract

The study of the Upper Palaeolithic in the South of the Iberian Peninsula is usually addressed from a few stratigraphic sequences recognized in the region. We can say that the upper Palaeolithic in Andalusia is one of the worse known stages of regional prehistory. On the other hand, its development has just surpassed the description of the typological formal characterization. In some cases, recent contributions in the central region of the Baetic Mountain range, confined to the province of Granada, appeared during the last century.In this sense, the present study has two objectives. On one hand, to present the site of the rockshelter 3 of the “tajos de Marchales” (Colomera, Granada, Spain), as a new Magdalenian site in the mountainous area of Sub-Baetic Andalusia.On the other hand, through the application of diacritic analysis on cores, unretouched material and tools recognisable, we present the technological characterization of different chaîne opératoire from the production supported by the main idea of different typological objectives (domain of burins, scrapers and to a lesser extent with backed edge blades). We distinguish the different operational sequences aimed at the generation of the artefactual set. All of this will allow us to obtain a global comprehension of the lithic assemblages from the site, and to define the beginning of its chaîne opératoire. The work presents and discusses the distinctive traits of the different technical elements, focused on laminar production (blades and bladelets) and knapping methods.