Early Neolithic Farming Activities in High Mountain Landscapes of the Pyrenees: Simulating Changes in Settlement Patterns

Abstract

In recent years, new archaeological research has highlighted relatively early neolithisation in different areas of the axial Pyrenees. Sites like Coro Trasito, Cueva Lóbrica, Els Trocs and Cova del Sardo show a consolidated presence of human communities with farming and animal husbandry and a fully Neolithic material culture at the end of the sixth millennium and the beginning of the fifth millennium cal BC. The arrival of this new way of life involved a change in former settlement patterns, with the abandonment of sites in high areas, over 2200 m a.s.l., which had been occupied in the Mesolithic. In turn, human settlement focused on lower mountain areas, between 1400 and 1800 m a.s.l. Renewed settlement around and over the current timberline would take place during the second half of the Neolithic, at the end of the third millennium cal BC. For this period, palaeoecological data suggest a clear expansion of pastures linked to anthropogenic factors. The paper presents an analysis of the dynamic construction of social territories through the modelling of a simulation of changing settlement patterns and uses of the space.