Economic transitions in finis terra

Abstract

A gradualist approach has been taken in describing the evolution of the last foragers in the Iberian Mediterranean Region (IMR) up to their rapid collapse, brought about by the appearance of the first prehistoric farmers. This point of view assumes that the post-Last Glaical Maximum (LGM) climatic change brought about a certain restructuring of the mammal fauna and exerted a direct influence by flooding the changing coastal plain and submerging coastal sites related to marine resource use. This paper proposes that small prey was a constant and structural resource in the IMR that did not signal intensification, since human consumption of rabbits goes back to the Middle Palaeolithic. At the same time, it proposes that the diversification-intensification associated with the Pleistocene-Holocene transition must be assessed mainly based on marine resources but integrated with the tool kits used to process them, symbolic imagery and the transportation of marine resources to some inland sites as evidence of the ...