Osseous industry and exploitation of animal resources in Southern Iberia during the Upper Palaeolithic

Abstract

During the Upper Palaeolithic, several climatic events were recorded in some archaeological sites in the Southern Iberian Peninsula. The aim is to focus on the relations between those phenomena and the mammal species hunted by hunter-gatherers groups, and whose bones were used, along with lithics, as raw material for manufacturing their bone toolkits. Hunter-gatherers seemed to have had a preference on hunting ungulates species that are gregarious such as red deer and goat, one of the characteristics of the faunal assemblages from the archaeological sites located near the coastal zones, including Vale Boi and Cendres in Southern Iberia. Regarding their toolkits, there was a preference in choosing mammal bone for the manufacture of their hunting and fishing equipment, as well as other utensils of daily life, during the Gravettian and Solutrean. Hunter-gatherers were preferably hunting juvenile and female red deer that do not have antlers. The opposite occurred during the Magdalenian, where red deer antler was used much more as a raw material. The Final Magdalenian and Epimagdalenian saw a decrease in the quantities of osseous artefacts and even a total absence of harpoons in Southern Iberian archaeological assemblages.