Beyond the archaeological contexts: The debate on the records of the Mesolithic and early Neolithic in the upper Ebro Basin

Abstract

Discussing the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic requires a definition for the archaeological record. In the Ebro Basin the typical archaeological sites, rock shelters, have been considered in a simplified way as hunting grounds, but advances in research indicate that they were in fact multi-purpose habitats with varied activities, tight control of resources and a comprehensive exploitation of the area. Our hypothesis is that Mesolithic societies were sedentary with a complex social organisation. For this reasons, we reject the concept of Mesolithic peoples with pottery which is applied to records which do not contain the whole Neolithic package. We know that versatility is one of the characteristics that defines these settlements whith a) all the steps in the lithic chaîne opératoire, b) a wide variety of objects, c) the use for hunting, butchery, fur making, woodworking, bone, plants and so on. In terms of wildlife, the description of an individual animal as domestic is not always easy to extrapolate from anatomical criteria, but an in-depth analysis does not discard this possibility either in the rockshelters. The prehistory of the Ebro Basin seems to indicate that their historical narrative began in the transition towards a production economy: in the balance between the archaeological record and historical logic it makes sense to assess ground-breaking processes of Neolithisation in comparison with participatory models of local communities.