Revisiting macromammal exploitation in the Spanish Cantabrian region during the lower Magdalenian (ca. 20-17 ky cal BP)

Abstract

Understanding the ways in which human groups use the environment for their survival is one of the main fields of study in Prehistory. Subsistence strategies, understood as the set of techniques, processes and activities through which human groups organise the tasks related to their survival, are a fundamental element for understanding the economic and sociocultural processes derived from these practices in the past. In this sense, archaeozoological and taphonomic studies are the main tool to reconstruct the ways in which our ancestors acquired, processed, consumed, and managed meat resources for their survival. In this research we examine the ways in which hunter-gatherer groups in the Spanish Cantabrian region exploited ungulates through a palaeoecological and palaeoeconomic analysis of a total of 32 archaeological levels at 19 sites dated between 20 and 17 ky cal BP. To this end, through research on faunal resources in this region, we will address the ways in which prey was acquired and transported, the age ranges, the seasonality of the captures and the nutritional energy contribution to the diet of the human groups, taking into account the cost of acquiring them, thus generating an updated view of subsistence strategies in the Cantabrian region.