Thirty Years of Mesolithic Research in Atlantic Coastal Iberia (1970-2000).

Thirty Years of Mesolithic Research in Atlantic Coastal Iberia (1970-2000)Author(s): G. A. ClarkReviewed work(s):Source: Journal of Anthropological Research, Vol. 56, No. 1, An American in Stone Age Spain:Homenaje de sus Alumnos al Prof. L. G. Freeman (Spring, 2000), pp. 17-37Published by: University of New MexicoStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3630966 .

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THIRTY YEARS OF MESOLITHIC RESEARCH IN ATLANTIC COASTAL IBERIA (1970-2000)

G.A. Clark

Department of Anthropology, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-2402

After a lapse of about two decades (1950-1970), and partly because of generational replacement, Late Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic hunter-gatherer adaptations along the Atlantic coasts of Iberia have been the subject of renewed research efforts. Conducted under a broadly defined ecofunctionalist paradigm, post-1970 work has yielded a more complete picture of regional variability than was previously available. Although differences are apparent in the tempo and intensity of research along the Cantabrian coast of Spain and in Atlantic Portugal, similar processes of resource diversification and intensification appear to be documented in both areas. These processes can be traced back to the pleniglacial maximum and are explained by population-resource imbalances created by an influx of immigrants from the north into already densely populated coastal areas.

PERHAPS MORE THAN ANY OTHER AMERICAN working in the European Paleolithic, Leslie Gordon Freeman has had a positive, lasting impact on the way early archaeology is done in Cantabrian Spain, Iberia, and beyond. Following pathbreaking research on the nature of Mousterian variability, Freeman trained several generations of archaeologists in the United States and Spain, introduced Spanish workers to processualism (and to American anthropological archaeology in general), and facilitated their research through participation in his projects at the cave sites of Cueva Morin and El Juyo, in Santander. Best known in the profession for his research at the Acheulean open sites of Torralba and Ambrona, in Soria, in the early 1960s (with F. Clark Howell, Karl Butzer, and Emiliano Aguirre), at the Mousterian cave site of Cueva Morin (late 1960s), and at the early Magdalenian site of El Juyo (mid-1980s to mid-1990s, with Joaquin Gonzailez Echegaray), his wide-ranging interests also extended to the Mesolithic and-back in the Basal Pleistocene-he encouraged me to pursue Mesolithic research as the subject of my Ph.D. dissertation (University of Chicago, 1971). The current status of Mesolithic research in Atlantic coastal Iberia over the past thirty years is assessed here and put into the context of the anthropological archaeology Les was so influential in introducing to the French-dominated research traditions of Latin Europe. Post-1970s research conducted under the aegis of Freeman's broad construal of paleoecology would seem to account for time-factored similarities in pattern in the Mesolithic adaptations found along the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal.

Journal of Anthropological Research, vol. 56, 2000 Copyright ? by The University of New Mexico

17



18 JOURNAL OF ANTHROPOLOGICAL RESEARCH

IBERIAN MESOLITHIC RESEARCH

A number of syntheses of Iberian Mesolithic research have appeared in recent years, most notably those of Arnaud (1989), Clark (1983a, 1989), Gonz ilez Morales and Arnaud (1990), Straus (1991a), Vierra (1995), and Bicho (1993, 1994), as well as overviews in Spanish and Portuguese journals and collected works (e.g., Arnaud 1993). I do not intend to recapitulate the contents of these publications here, since they are probably known to most western Mediterranean Mesolithic researchers. Instead I want to use these works to summarize research conclusions, identify the features that characterize Iberian research in the 1990s, and indicate briefly how they differ from earlier work along the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal.

"Modern" research on the Vasco-Cantabrian Mesolithic can be said to date from the early 1970s, that in Portugal to about a decade later. Both regions saw much accelerated work during the 1980s, share a central "package" of research biases that can broadly be defined as "ecological" and "adaptationist," and are characterized by research protocols that represent a departure from the lithic- and site-centered typological approaches of earlier generations. The intellectual mandate for this kind of research appears to have originated (1) in the heavily ecological "economic prehistory" school at Cambridge, dominated by Grahame Clark (e.g., 1972) and Eric Higgs (e.g., 1972, 1975) and most evident in the Spanish context with the work of Geoff Bailey (e.g., 1983a) and (2) in the interdisciplinary natural science approaches favored by the American research tradition, always somewhat buffered against the typological excesses of Latin Europe. These approaches first began to have an impact in Spain during the late 1960s, with the collaborative efforts of Joaquin Gonzailez Echegaray and Leslie Freeman (e.g., 1971,1973) at Cueva Morin (Santander) and with work during the 1970s by their "first generation" students (Clark, Moure, Straus, Conkey, Harrold). The end of the Franco dictatorship coincided with a resurgence of foreign collaboration, which now, unhappily, has diminished somewhat, partly as a consequence of the political realignment resultant from the formation of the regional governments in 1984 and partly from the emergence of a substantial cadre of Spanish prehistorians now in the most active phases of their careers. This process was delayed by about a decade in Portugal, where work by the Canadians Lubell, Jackes, and Meiklejohn (e.g., 1989) and, later, by Marks and his colleagues (e.g., 1994) and Straus (e.g., 1991b), acted as a stimulus for wider application of ecofunctional approaches by a new generation of Portuguese prehistorians, including Arnaud, Zilhdo, and Bicho.

Here as elsewhere, the justification for studying the Mesolithic as a problem domain is seldom made explicit but seems to depend upon the idea that the deglaciation was a period of accelerated climatic change that forced changes in human adaptation across a wide range of distinct European environments. Although these changes were less marked in Iberia than in more northerly latitudes, there were nevertheless shifts in the distributions of the plant and animal resources upon which Mesolithic foragers depended for food, and a



MESOLITHIC RESEARCH IN ATLANTIC COASTAL IBERIA 19

gradual rise in sea levels which reduced, to some extent, land areas available for settlement. Research efforts in both Spain and Portugal have emphasized (1) refining the chronological framework (most of the radiocarbon determinations from Mesolithic sites postdate 1980), (2) reconstruction of the sequence of local and regional environmental changes, often accompanied by (questionable) efforts to place Iberian data into dated, northern European pollen sequences, (3) study of the subsistence economy, grounded in efforts to understand relationships of site and resource distributions over time, (4) determinations of seasonality where adequate faunal data are available, (5) activity-area oriented intrasite spatial analyses, (6) identification of the regional characteristics of functionally categorized site distributions (e.g., residential base camps, game lookouts, specialized hunting stations, and other limited activity sites, etc.), (7) evidence for changes that might have influenced the subsistence economy (e.g., mass hunting techniques, fishing, fowling), and (8) evidence for population growth, resulting in population-resource imbalances. Although most research has been directed toward reconstructing regional ecosystems over time and toward identifying the human component in them, little effort has been expended so far in addressing general questions of process and causality, nor has the nature of the basic analytical units been subjected to much critical scrutiny.

Cantabrian Spain In terms of normative typological systematics, most of the first half of the

Cantabrian Preboreal is characterized by backed bladelet and endscraper dominated Azilian assemblages, which, in default of the diagnostic harpoons, are indistinguishable from the late Magdalenian of the region. Dated Azilian sites extend up in time to c. 9300 B.P., when they give way to the coastally distributed Asturian, associated with limpet-dominated concheros, heavy-duty quartzite tools, and simple flake assemblages dated mainly to the Boreal and early Atlantic periods. Ceramics show up in shell midden contexts late in the Atlantic period, at c. 5500 B.P., but the "neolithization" of Cantabria was very partial and late (Clark 1987). Although consensus has remained elusive (cf. Gonzilez Morales 1982), I continue to believe that there is evidence for overlap between the Azilian and the Asturian for the 9500-8500 B.P. interval if standard deviations for individual radiocarbon dates are used to establish contemporaneity (Straus 1979; Clark 1983b, 1989). Ten determinations comprising five Azilian samples, three Asturian ones, and two that cannot be assigned to either analytical unit fall in this interval and suggest the possibility of functional complementarity between these two very different assemblage types. Of some interest is the observation that all "late" Azilian sites are located inland, whereas all Asturian sites are coastal, implying a bimodal pattern of site location during the period of overlap. As Gonzilez Morales (1989) has pointed out, however, grand means and standard deviations for the two series of dates do not overlap.

In what appears to be a long, drawn out, and partial "substitution phase" (Zvelebil and Rowley-Conwy 1984), the relatively stable socioeconomic system represented by the Asturian begins to give way after c. 5500 B.P. to




agropastoralism, reflected archaeologically by the construction of megaliths from the coasts to the highlands, as, for example at Pefia Oviedo (1,250 m asl), where they are associated with habitations (Diez Castillo 1999). The seasonal movement characteristic of pastoralists is a continuation of earlier patterns of transhumance that likely extend back into the Mesolithic and beyond. The modern configuration, with a strong emphasis on ovicaprine pastoralism and with relatively little agriculture, appears to date from the Chalcolithic (c. 4200 B.P.), whereas the earliest hill forts occur in the Early Bronze Age (c. 3750 B.P.), perhaps signaling higher population densities, environmental degradation caused by overgrazing, evidence for conflict resulting from increased competition over land, and the first aggregated settlements (Gonzalez Sainz and Gonzalez Morales 1986; Arias-Cabal 1991, 1999).

In my opinion, the Azilian and the Asturian represent two major "kinds" of Mesolithic assemblage represented along the Cantabrian coastal strip. Other "kinds" of assemblages thought to date to the Dryas III-Boreal interval (10.8-7.5 kyr B.P.) are extremely rare in coastal contexts, although they show up inland in some frequency in the Basque country (see, e.g., Barandiarin and Cava 1989). Thirty-two fairly credible Asturian sites lie at low elevations (R = 36.5 m) at a mean distance to the present shoreline of 1.4 km, with very little evidence of midden accumulation further than 3 km inland. The corresponding mean for twenty-six credible Azilian sites is 10.3 km and might have been as great as 15 km during the Dryas III interval, to which most Azilian sites are dated. Mean elevation is 122 m, indicating substantial numbers of sites located inland in relatively high, mountainous terrain. In regard to surface area, Asturian sites are unimodally distributed and in size are "small" (<36 m2) and "medium" (36-60 m2) on average. Azilian site areas are bimodally distributed, with the larger sites (>60 m2) found on the coastal plain and small sites (<36 m2) occurring most often in high alpine gorges. The latter tend to have ibex-dominated faunas, lending credence to the idea that these sites owe their existence to monitoring, procuring, and processing these wary alpine caprids. Azilian site locational data reported in Clark (1989) indicate possible residential camp-hunting station dyads for eight pairs of Azilian sites (i.e., Santimamifie/Atxeta [Ria Guernica], Lumentxa/ Ermittia [Deva], Ekain/Urtiaga [Urola], Morin/Pielago and Rascafio [Solia- Miera], Rio/Azules [Sella], Valle/Mir6n [As6n], and Candamo/Sofox6 [Nal6n/ Nora]). While these elements in an Azilian settlement-subsistence system are not as distinct as might be desirable, it is significant that they form part of a general Upper Paleolithic pattern in which such site functional relationships appear to be redundant and to persist over time (Clark and Straus 1986; Straus and Clark 1986). The fact that the Asturian configuration is quite distinct implies a fundamental rearticulation of the elements in the system at some point after c. 8500 B.P., since there are few indications of inland occupation after that date.

The Mesolithic data presented here only begin to make sense when viewed from the larger perspective of patterns visible in the Cantabrian Upper Paleolithic. Recent comparative evaluations of post-Aurignacian Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic assemblages by Straus (1983, 1985; Straus and Clark




1986) and me (1983a, 1983b, 1989; Clark and Straus 1983,1986) have determined the existence of two major Vasco-Cantabrian assemblage types that seem to persist and recur throughout the latter part of the Last Glacial and into the early Postglacial. These assemblage types are dominated, on the one hand, by quartzite notches and denticulates, sidescrapers and crude heavy-duty tools and, on the other, by backed bladelets with substantial numbers of small endscrapers and burins made of flint. The Asturian is in general an example of the former; most Azilian collections are examples of the latter. We believe these assemblage types can probably be explained in functional terms. They seem to represent two rather generalized and flexible technologies which persisted for about fifteen millennia (c. 21-7 kyr B.P.) and which probably reflect in some imperfect way two distinct, yet broadly defined, sets of activities or behaviors (Clark 1989).

There are suggestions of periodicity in the occurrence of these assemblage types which hint at recurrent shifts in adaptation, perhaps coupled with changes in the distribution and availability of key resources. These changes have traditionally been explained by invoking changes in climate, with concomitant changes in sea level and in the extent of exposure of the continental shelf (see, e.g., Bailey 1983a, 1983b). While the impact of climatic change on human behavior and resource distributions cannot be dismissed in the case of the north Spanish Upper Paleolithic, it seems to have been of relatively minor importance from the more restricted perspective of the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary assemblages of interest here.

To the extent that trends in the human food niche can be monitored over the long term (c. 45-2 kyr B.P.), increasing resource intensification and diversification appear to be documented from c. 20 kyr B.P. on (see, e.g., Straus 1977), with the most diverse economic faunas occurring during the Asturian and the most convincing examples of intensification corresponding to the established domestication economies of the Bronze and Iron Ages. In the absence of evidence to the contrary, Straus and I tend to explain these trends as due to imbalances created by a growing regional population and its traditional resource base.

Portugal Research on the Portuguese Mesolithic can be said to date from 1863, with

the discovery by F.A. Pereira da Costa and Carlos Ribeiro of the famous open- air concheiro sites of the lower Tagus valley (Muge estuary: Moita do Sebastido, Cabeqo da Amoreira, Cabeqo da Arruda), intensively investigated during the 1950s and 1960s by the Abbe Jean Roche (e.g., 1972) and best known for their spectacular cemeteries and structures (see, e.g., Ferembach 1974). In the 1930s, other open-air shell middens were reported by Hip61lito Cabaqo from the Magos estuary, another southern tributary of the Tagus, and by Lereno Antunes from the Rio Sado, some 100 km to the south. These last have been the focus of long- term excavations, first, during the 1950s and 1960s, by the staff of the National Archaeological and Ethnological Museum (Lisbon) under the direction of Manuel Heleno (which were never published) and, after 1981, by a




multidisciplinary team headed by J.E. Morais Arnaud (1989). Of the Sado valley sites, Cabeqo do Pez and Poqas de Sao Bento are probably the most important. At about the same time, a Canadian team headed by David Lubell and Mary Jackes (1985, 1988) began a program of survey and excavation at Medo Tojeiro and Samouqueira in the Mira valley on the Alentejo coast, in the extreme southwestern part of the country. Other, smaller projects-notably that of Lawrence Straus at Vidigal-were also undertaken in the Alentejo during the 1980s (Straus 1991b). So, "modern" research is very modern indeed. It could accurately be described as still in the descriptive stages, with much effort expended on chronology building, paleoenvironmental reconstruction, lithic- based time-space systematics (although, despite the important influence of French typological schemes manifest in the long-term research efforts of Georges Zybszewski and the Abbe Breuil himself, more oriented toward technology), studies of settlement patterns and subsistence strategies, and dietary reconstructions. Some individual sites are beginning to be fairly extensively reported, for example, Vidigal (Straus 1991b) and Areeiro (Bicho 1991). The first synthetic, explanatory efforts postdate 1990 (e.g., Vierra 1992; Bicho 1992, 1994; Zilhdo 1992). In light of strong evidence for continuity in adaptation between the Late Upper Paleolithic and the Early Postglacial, some Portuguese workers (notably Bicho) have proposed the term "Epipaleolithic" to denote sites of Holocene age with LUP characteristics (10.5-8 kyr B.P.), whereas "Mesolithic" denotes sites dating to the Atlantic period (8.5-6 kyr B.P.), when technologies, subsistence economies, and settlement patterns all changed dramatically. Other workers (e.g., Arnaud) divide the 10.5-6 kyr B.P. interval into an "early" and a "late" Mesolithic but on the same criteria (i.e., major shifts in technology, subsistence, and settlement postdating 8 kyr B.P.).

Portuguese sites considered to be "early" Mesolithic date from c. 10-8.4 kyr B.P. and include concheiros, open-air lithic scatters, and cave deposits. Many are situated in fossil dunes along the coasts of Estremadura and Alentejo. They can be dominated by either microlithic chert artifacts or macrolithic cobble tools (rarely both), thus reflecting the fundamental dichotomy observed for the north Spanish Epipaleolithic. As was true of the Spanish Asturian, there has been some debate over whether some or all of the macrolithic cobble assemblages are of Paleolithic or Mesolithic age. These include "Asturian" assemblages found in fossil beaches and river gravels along the north Portuguese coast and extending into Galicia (Serpa Pinto 1928; Clark 1976), the "Languedocian" of the central and south Portuguese littoral, and the "Mirian," a supposed Languedocian facies or variant found in the Rio Mira estuary and on the Alentejo coast near Vila Nova de Mil Fontes (Breuil and Zybszewski 1942, 1946). Mirian "diagnostics" include unifacial cobble choppers, picks, the eponymous "axes," disc cores, net sinkers (stone doughnuts), and fishing weights (waisted pebbles) typically made of local greywacke---essentially the same kinds of artifacts that characterize the Cantabrian Asturian. While distinctions among these assemblages are problematic, the question of whether the "Mirian," at least, actually dated to the Paleolithic or the Epipaleolithic was resolved by Raposo and Penalva's




excavations at Palheir6es do Alegra, on the Alentejo coast near the mouth of the Mira, which produced both typical "Mirian" cobble tools and microliths dated to 8400 + 70 B.P. (Raposo 1988; Raposo, Penalva, and Pereira 1989). This Mirian assemblage, the only one dated so far, is thus contemporaneous with the north Spanish Asturian concheros, which also consist mainly of cobble picks and unifaces (but which lack microliths). Unlike the Spanish sites, Mirian and Portuguese Asturian sites are not usually associated with shell middens. None of the Portuguese Asturian sites have been systematically excavated or dated, but Maury (1977) suggests that it, like its Cantabrian counterpart, is also of Postglacial age.

Late Mesolithic sites tend to be almost exclusively microlithic and date from approximately 7.5-5.1 kyr B.P. Ceramics appear in the upper levels of some of these middens at around 6.0 kyr B.P. In contrast to the early sites, late Mesolithic concheiros are typically situated along river systems in estuarine settings-true not only of the Muge and Sado site clusters, but also of smaller site groups along minor drainages in the Alentejo (south) and Estremadura (central) regions of Portugal. These occupations coincide with the onset of the Flandrian transgression at c. 6.5 kyr B.P., which reached its maximum between c. 5.7 and 4.1 kyr B.P. Given the relatively low relief of the central and southern Portuguese coastal plain, the Flandrian transgression resulted in the creation of new estuarine habitats which extended as much as 30 km upstream from present-day shorelines. The few pollen sequences known from central and southern Portugal indicate the presence of pine forests which, during the "late" Mesolithic, were being replaced by oak park-forest woodlands (Mateus 1989). The Mesolithic- Neolithic transition, defined on the basis of pottery (and on the introduction of ovicaprines at Gruta do Caldeirio and Casa da Moura) coincides on the central and south coast with the maximum extent of the Flandrian marine transgression at c. 6-5 kyr B.P. There is little evidence of a late Mesolithic occupation in northern Portugal (Vierra 1992).

Relative to Spain, dietary information is still very scarce for the Portuguese Late Paleolithic and Mesolithic. Sparse data on the LUP and Epipaleolithic have been summarized recently by Bicho (1993); there are some extensive reports and dietary syntheses for the Mesolithic shell midden sites by Arnaud (1990, 1993) and by members of the Canadian team (Lubell and Jackes 1985; Lubell, Jackes, and Meiklejohn 1989; Jackes and Lubell 1999). In the LUP, red deer, aurochsen, wild boar, and horse were the dominant economic species, with significant rabbit and hare remains reported from Caldeirio Cave (Zilhio, Carvalho, and Arauijo 1987; Zilhio 1992). Nuts, berries, and fruit were available, as indicated by the tree species present in pollen samples from Cabeqo de Porto Marinho (Figueiral n.d.) and implied by the presence of grinding stones from various sites dated to c. 11 kyr B.P. (Bicho 1993).

Between 11 and 8 kyr B.P. (Preboreal, Boreal periods), apparently few significant changes occurred in the major elements of the diet, except for the occasional appearance of ibex and chamois. Molluscs are present in abundance in both estuarine and littoral sites. The main species represented are the common




cockle, oyster, various clams, mussels, limpets, periwinkles, and topshells, indicating exploitation of several estuarine habitats and of the rocky, open coastline. The same range of shellfish species is found in Atlantic-age sites, except for the cold-water adapted periwinkle (Littorina littorea). Roche (1982) reports unidentified fish remains from Lapa do Suio, while an estuarine-coastal sparid, gilthead, is present at Caldeirio and at other sites dated to the Atlantic period (Toledo, Samouqueira, Arapouco), along with meagre, ray, and shark (Arnaud 1986). Bird bones show up in the Muge concheiros, and duck, pigeon, and partridge are common enough to suggest that they were probably of dietary significance (Arnaud 1993).

Overall, the Portuguese data suggest a pattern similar to that of Cantabrian Spain, with a trend, which probably began in the LUP, towards subsistence intensification through both specialization (e.g., Bicho [1993] argues that in central Portugal, aurochsen and red deer were probably hunted by driving and surrounds) and diversification, including increasing emphasis on a wide range of aquatic resources such as estuarine and coastal shellfish, birds, and marine fish (there are no salmonids in Portuguese sites). Dietary diversity apparently reached a maximum in the Atlantic-age shell middens and included the long- term dietary staples-large and medium-sized ungulates like red deer, aurochs, roe deer, boar, and horse; small species that were probably hunted collectively with nets, like rabbit and hare; birds; both estuarine and open coastal shellfish, crustaceans, and echinoderms; estuarine and marine fish; and occasional marine mammals (e.g., otter). Plant remains are known from some sites (e.g., Medo Tojeiro, Samouqueira) and include oak, pine, and pistachio. The stable isotope analysis of several human skeletons from Muge has indicated a diet balanced between terrestrial and aquatic resources (Lubell, Jackes, and Meiklejohn 1989).

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN?

Despite differences of scale and timing, differences in the specifics of the regional ecologies, and differences in the tempo and history of investigation, it appears to me that broadly similar processes are taking place over the 20-7 kyr B.P. interval along the Atlantic coasts of Spain and Portugal. Moreover, I think these processes can be generalized for large parts of western coastal Europe, including France and the Low Countries, the British Isles, and Scandinavia. What do these apparent similarities in pattern tell us about hunter-gatherer adaptations in general and Mesolithic adaptations in particular, and where do the latter fit in the long-term evolutionary ecology of western coastal Europe? An arbitrary "slice" of a temporal continuum, the Mesolithic only makes sense when viewed from the perspective of the Pleniglacial maximum. The salient features that must be explained are (1) vectored changes in the paleoeconomy in the direction of resource intensification manifest in increasing dietary diversity, (2) the common aspects of the lithic technologies-notably the widely observed dichotomy between large, crude, cobble and flake-dominated assemblages and diminutive microlithic bladelet industries (more generally, the appearance of




microlithic technologies), (3) the comings and goings of the "art" (why does it show up when and where it does in the European context, and why does parietal art disappear at the LUP-Mesolithic boundary?), and (4) the transition to domestication economies, different in timing and detail but similar in pattern over large areas of western Europe.

As I pointed out earlier, post-1970 Mesolithic research seems to be characterized by broadly similar research protocols emphasizing ecological- functionalist explanations for pattern-explanations that can be subsumed under evolutionary ecology and that are grounded in "adaptationist" biases (Mithen 1993; cf. Bar-Yosef 1991). While this shared perspective is viewed here as a considerable strength of the Mesolithic research traditions, it is also sometimes regarded as a potential weakness. If it is acknowledged that we have adopted an adaptationist program, we should ask ourselves what that really means. Are there any viable alternatives to the ecofunctionalist biases that underlie Iberian Mesolithic research? Do these biases preclude the possibility of getting at certain kinds of social information? Do they allow us to access the ideological domain? More particularly, what does the apparent disappearance of parietal art and aggregation sites in the Mesolithic mean, given their presence in the LUP and given the continuation of portable art? What does the widespread and penecontemporaneous appearance of microlithic technologies after c. 20 kyr B.P. imply and what does their elaboration during the Mesolithic mean in terms of human adaptation? Most generally, is it possible to come up with a comprehensive scenario for Mesolithic adaptations that explains their salient features and that is at the same time more compelling than the piecemeal post hoc accommodative arguments that have prevailed in the literature so far? I believe the answer is a qualified "yes," acknowledging the many empirical insufficiencies that preclude putting such a scenario to a rigorous test.

Regional Demography and Subsistence Intensification The cornerstone of this scenario is the idea that patterns observed in

Atlantic coastal Iberia over the 20-7 kyr B.P. interval were ultimately determined by changes in regional demography and by the consequent population-resource imbalances they entailed (e.g., Straus 1977). The proximate cause of these patterns is population displacements in northern and central Europe brought about by climatic severity during the Pleniglacial maximum. As many workers have noted, this would have led to increased population densities in southern European refugia, the best documented of which is the Franco-Cantabrian one, comprising a 340,000 km2 area of southwestern France and the topographically bounded north Spanish coastal strip (19,800 km2). These geographically constrained areas already sustained relatively high population densities prior to the LGM, and the influx of immigrants would have created selection pressures for novel ways to broaden the human food niche, setting in motion a process which culminated (in terms of dietary diversity) in the "broad spectrum" economies of the Mesolithic. Seen from this perspective, the Neolithic "revolution" is nothing more than a "worst case scenario" that comes about




when foragers have run out of options for further diversification, so that domestication (perhaps the ultimate form of intensification) is the only alternative (Clark 1999a, 1999b).

"Neolithization" as a Last Resort It is no accident that the "neolithization" of Atlantic Europe is very partial

and late vis-a-vis that of Mediterranean Europe. The reason has nothing to do with the westward march of Neolithic colonizers, as has sometimes been suggested (e.g., Ammerman and Cavalli-Sforza 1984), but rather with the fact that foragers are very flexible in terms of dietary choice and, under conditions of increasing stress, select resources in a predictable way so that energy expended in doing so is kept to a minimum-the "least cost" selection assumption of many ecologists (Clark 1987, 1999b). This means that foragers will respond to stress by diversifying their resource base by the sequential addition of higher cost, lower yield resources (like shellfish) and by overexploitation (often to the point of diminishing returns) of "traditional" dietary staples (like red deer). This process invariably occurs at the expense of efficiency in resource extraction but generally does not approach the massive labor inputs of full-blown agricultural societies.

The Iberian data document this process of diversification and intensification as well as might be expected, given the vagaries of preservation, sampling error, tempo of research, etc. The timing of the onset of these processes after 20 kyr B.P. is scarcely coincidental. They were probably set in motion by the Pleniglacial depopulation of large parts of northern and central Europe and the resultant influx of immigrants into the Franco-Cantabrian refugium. Evidence for precocious social complexity (e.g., sedentism, structures, cemeteries) seen in the Tagus and Sado estuaries-unique in the Iberian context-can be explained by social circumscription and the closing of social networks due to "packing" of an already densely populated, resource-rich estuarine environment (Clark and Neeley 1987). The cemeteries probably represent the appearance of corporate descent groups "staking a claim" to the right of eminent domain over an increasingly circumscribed economic territory, as Arthur Saxe argued in the early 1970s (e.g., 1971).

Microlithic Technologies, Time-Stress, and Risk Management The widespread appearance of microliths after c. 20 kyr B.P. and the

increasingly "microlithic" character of Mesolithic technologies can also be explained from an adaptationist perspective by invoking a model that relates these phenomena to scheduling constraints and time-stress resultant from dietary intensification due to population-resource imbalances. This is an idea that can be traced in the present context to Robin Torrence (1983, 1989) and ultimately to David Clarke (1976), who proposed that microlithic technologies were highly flexible, "plug-in, pull-out" technologies that were more efficient than macrolithic ones in certain contexts and that were not confined ethnographically to hunting pursuits.

Drawing on principles of evolutionary ecology, Torrence (1983) suggested




that selection should favor a technology that maximized the efficient use of time by reducing resource acquisition and processing costs. She assumed that fitness is a function of foraging efficiency as measured by some currency (e.g., input- output ratios or the net rate of energy return). She modified this position in 1989 by adding a risk-management component: although time constraints are often the proximate causes for changes in technological systems, risk management is the ultimate cause, risk being minimized by managing the use of time more efficiently (Torrence 1989:60). Time-stress is a function of the duration of time that a resource is available for exploitation, determined by the kind of resource being exploited and where the resource "fits" among the competing demands of other resource procurement systems. Efficiency should vary as a function of resource availability and accessibility.

The time-stress model defines more specialized technologies as those with greater tool diversity and complexity and predicts that they would be found in highly seasonal environments characterized by limited periods of resource availability and less accessible resources (i.e., mobile animals). More generalized technologies are those with reduced tool diversity and complexity, expected to occur most commonly in less or nonseasonal (tropical) environments with longer periods of resource availability and more accessible resources (i.e., immobile plants). Ignoring the dubious criterion of latitude as an index of resource availability but retaining Torrence's definitions, microlith-dominated industries would be the quintessential example of a specialized technology, comprised of interchangeable parts, maximally flexible and very probably produced by a broadly generalizable reduction sequence (Neeley and Barton 1994). In contrast, simple cobble and flake-dominated assemblages like the Asturian would correspond reasonably well to Torrence's definition of a generalized technology, perhaps oriented mostly toward the procurement of plants.

Myers (1989) provides a case study using the perspective advocated by Torrence (1983, 1989). He was interested in explaining technological change from the early to late Mesolithic in Britain by identifying changes in selective pressures for minimizing resource procurement risks. The observed pattern was a shift from the use of a few large nongeometric microliths per tool in the early Mesolithic (c. 10.3-8.7 kyr B.P.) to the use of small geometrically shaped microliths mounted in series on composite tools in the late Mesolithic (8.7-5.4 kyr B.P.). He argued that late Mesolithic technologies comprised a "maintainable weapon system" (sensu Bleed 1986) in which tools were continually used and maintained "in the field" due to unpredictability in the temporal and spatial distribution of food resources. The geometric microlithic technologies of the late Mesolithic might have been designed to maximize flexibility and were used in a wide range of procurement and processing activities. He suggested that the composite nature of microlithic tools made them more easily repaired and/or modified according to circumstances and thus more efficient (because of their flexibility) under conditions of time-stress and resource unpredictability.

Vierra (1992) has taken this approach considerably further, applying it to temporally vectored changes in subsistence and technology in the Portuguese




Mesolithic. He suggested that although time-stress could be related to variations in environment and resource distributions, it could also arise from increasing subsistence diversification and the scheduling conflicts that a diversified subsistence strategy necessarily entails. Straus (1977, 1983) and I (Clark 1983a, 1987) have argued that increasing diet breadth is characteristic of the Iberian Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic and that it probably results mainly from regional population growth and the "packing" phenomenon. Dietary diversity would be especially important in seasonal environments like those of mid-latitude Europe, where populations would have needed to store food or to have had access to "insurance resources" like shellfish to get them over the winter lean season. Given a density-dependent situation, foods appear to be added to the diet in decreasing order of net rate of energy return (i.e., as more easily acquired "high yield" resources become less abundant in the environment, more "costly" foods in terms of greater acquisition and processing costs are added to the diet). This means greater reliance on smaller food package sizes (e.g., shellfish) and on small game and aquatic resources. It seems likely, therefore, that increasing diet breadth would also lead to scheduling conflicts, resolved by special task groups with specialized technologies at their disposal geared toward the efficient procurement of a particular resource. Population growth, subsistence diversification, time-stress, and technological complexity should all be highly correlated with one another and, in fact, Vierra (1992, 1995) achieved a reasonably good "fit" with his predictions in the Portuguese research.

Art from an Information-Exchange Perspective Finally, there is the art-why does it come and go when and where it does?

An inability to deal with nontechnological aspects of adaptation like "art" is frequently cited as a defect in the ecofunctionalist program (see, e.g., Gonzalez Morales 1991). What does the apparent disappearance of parietal art in the Mesolithic imply, given a continuation of the portable art? Michael Barton, Alison Cohen, and I have taken up this question in two recent papers (Barton, Clark, and Cohen 1994; Clark, Barton, and Cohen 1996; see also Straus 1987). Basically, we argue that the fluorescence of parietal art in the Franco-Cantabrian LUP and its disappearance in the Mesolithic are related aspects of a single evolutionary process. In response to changing population densities in the southwestern European refugium over the 20-10 kyr B.P. interval, that process involved the initial Pleniglacial intensification and subsequent Tardiglacial relaxation of selective pressures favoring the expression of certain kinds of symbolic behavior.

Given our adaptationist biases, our approach to the art is essentially a functionalist one that views it as the remains of communication systems involving the exchange of information. This is an idea that, in its present context, originated with Polly Wiessner (1983), who sees the creation of art as an act of social communication defined, at various levels and scales, by style. Style in turn has its behavioral basis in a fundamental human cognitive process: the personal and social identification of images through visual comparison. Anglophone




researchers in recent years have studied style in order to try to identify the different functions that it can fulfill at different scales and in different social contexts. In sharp contrast to the pattern searches that have prevailed on the Continent, style is usually defined here by its determining processes rather than its material conditions.

The 25-10 kyr B.P. interval in Europe brackets the Pleniglacial maximum, the Tardiglacial, and the initial phases of the deglaciation, marked initially by virtual abandonment of northern and central Europe (25-21 kyr B.P.) and by population concentration in the Franco-Cantabrian refugium (21-13 kyr B.P.), followed, during what Gamble (1986, 1991) has called the "upturn" (13-10 kyr B.P.), by recolonization of areas formerly abandoned or depopulated. Both parietal and portable art are heavily concentrated in the southwestern refugium and generally date to 18-13 kyr B.P. Jochim (1983, 1987) argued that as populations moved into southwestern Europe from elsewhere, increases in population density would have led to socioeconomic problems of various kinds, as increasing numbers of people were packed into topographically constrained regions like the Dordogne and the north Spanish coastal strip. The art would have played a role in conflict resolution as the social geography of the region came to be characterized more and more by relatively closed social networks. This, he suggested, would have selected for alliance formation and negotiation, essentially because these populations would have had nowhere else to go (i.e., they couldn't have resolved conflicts in the traditional forager way--by emigration). Conkey's studies of the diversity of design attributes on Cantabrian portable art suggest that sites with high diversity indices were places where people from many different identity-conscious social units came together periodically for a multiplicity of reasons (Conkey 1980, see also 1984, 1985; Newell et al. 1990). Called "aggregation sites," their presence lends support to an "information-exchange" type explanation of the art as linked to rituals of demarcation and boundary negotiation (possibly of economic territories), conflict resolution in general, the sharing of subsistence information, and a host of other factors. It is noteworthy that during eight or nine previous Middle and Upper Pleistocene glacial-interglacial fluctuations, Europe, and presumably other middle-latitude temperate regions of the Old World, had been largely or completely abandoned by human populations. Thus the appearance of art and aggregation sites is a significant change in the way human foragers responded to severe environmental stress. It signals the appearance of an adaptive complex not seen before among Upper Pleistocene foragers.

Portable art is only one part of the picture, however. That parietal art is concentrated when and where it is also demands an explanation. Although one could argue a priori that the time-space distribution of parietal art is probably connected in some way to the demographic factors which I take to be causal, we have to explain why it is almost exclusively a refuge period, Franco-Cantabrian phenomenon. Here it is useful to invoke Polly Wiessner's distinction between assertive and emblemic style and, recalling Conkey's argument for aggregation sites, suggest that channels of information flow revealed in the distributions of




parietal and portable art are overlapping but distinct. In other words, the two broad art categories are monitoring two different aspects of Franco-Cantabrian social geography, manifest at two different scales. We think that the portable art, mainly ornaments, probably indicates the presence of Wiessner's assertive style: formal variation in material culture which is "personally-based and which carries information supporting individual identity" (Wiessner 1983:258). It functions at an idiosyncratic level to differentiate individuals from similar others (Newell et al. 1990). Assertive style is found in all societies and, indeed, throughout Europe and across the time interval of interest here. It cross-cuts identity-conscious social units. Since it functions on both intra- and intergroup levels, it is a universal phenomenon in modern human contexts and is completely unconnected to the relative degree of closure of social networks.

We think the parietal art-not necessarily found at sites with lots of portable art-probably indicates Wiessner's emblemic style: "formal variation in material culture that has a distinct referent and that transmits a clear message to a defined target population" (Wiessner 1983:257). By definition, emblemic style always carries a symbolic loading, whereas assertive style does not necessarily do so. It could thus be argued that emblemic style manifest in parietal art facilitates intergroup communication-messaging across social unit boundaries. If indeed it does this, we would expect examples of emblemic style to be much more common under conditions of high population density and social network closure than they would be under low population density and more open social networks. Parietal art is a Franco-Cantabrian phenomenon, heavily concentrated in the 18-13 kyr B.P. interval. It disappears in the refugium after c. 10 kyr B.P., suggesting that the conditions that selected for its appearance were no longer present after the LGM. The ornaments, however, persist into the Postglacial, indicating a return to the open social networks characteristic of the early Last Glacial (i.e., 30-21 kyr B.P.). In other words, the model postulates open systems with relatively low population densities and little parietal art for the 30-21 kyr B.P. interval, followed by a closing of social networks because of increases in population density and by a high incidence of both portable and parietal art during the refuge phase (20-13 kyr B.P.). The deglaciation (13-10 kyr B.P.) sees the reappearance of more open social networks, the disappearance of the parietal art, and a dispersal of the concentrated "refuge phase" population during the Mesolithic.

The "information exchange" approach to the art taken here is wholly consistent with the adaptationist biases that underlie the evolutionary ecology paradigm. It depends upon differentiating the art (i.e., making a distinction between assertive and emblemic style), arguing that emblemic style is, among other things, a monitor of demographic stress and that the appearance of parietal art is an indication of the closing of social networks under conditions of increasing population density. We are not suggesting that the appearance of parietal art is the only response of foraging peoples to demographic stress. However, its occurrence might mark episodes of accelerated demographic change, especially if those changes are in the direction of higher population densities relative to carrying capacity. The population-resource imbalances so




created might select for increased emphasis on emblemic style traditions to the extent that it becomes visible in the archaeological record.

CONCLUSIONS

In my opinion, four salient aspects or features of the Mesolithic of Atlantic coastal Iberia are well documented in the pattern searches reviewed here. These are: (1) vectored changes in the paleoeconomy in the direction of resource intensification manifest in increasing dietary diversity; (2) the common aspects of the lithic technologies-notably the widely observed dichotomy between large, crude, cobble and flake tool-dominated assemblages made in quartzite and microlithic bladelet industries made in flint; (3) the comings and goings of the "art"-why it shows up when and where it does, and why parietal art apparently disappears at the LUP-Mesolithic boundary; and (4) the transition to domestication economies-different in timing and detail but similar in pattern along Iberia's Atlantic coasts. These patterns appear to be empirically robust and raise questions about what processes might be causing them to occur. Each of us has his or her own answers to these questions, and, in this essay, I develop an integrated approach that attempts to explain them all. Whether it is realistic to do this is, of course, arguable. Since I see archaeology as a "science-like" endeavor, I tend to regard general explanations as a "regulatory ideal"- something to strive for (Clark 1993). Others, who view archaeology as "history- like," might not agree that it is worthwhile or even possible to do this.

The answers that I would offer to the four questions posed above are as follows:

Vectored Paleoeconomic Change I believe that resource intensification manifest as increasing dietary

diversity in Spain and Portugal was forced on Mesolithic foragers by population- resource imbalances caused by a combination of environmental change (notably marine transgression, significant in the case of Portugal, which has a relatively shallow continental shelf) and population growth. Over time, these changes forced foragers to go farther down the trophic pyramid, procuring greater quantities of "expensive" (high-cost, low-yield) resources and searching for ways to wring more nutrients out of "traditional" resources in order to feed a growing regional population. In the Iberian context, this process was set in motion by an influx of "refuge period" immigrants.

Common Aspects of the Lithic Technologies The dichotomy between large, crude, quartzite "heavy duty" tools and

small, microlith-dominated flint industries is a pattern that goes back in time to the Last Glacial Maximum (ca. 20 kyr B.P.), if not before. It reflects different activity suites and the constraints on artifact form imposed by a fundamental raw-material dichotomy. The appearance of microlith-dominated assemblages can most satisfactorily be explained by time-stress, which would have selected




for flexible, "plug-in, pull-out" technologies. In the Iberian context, the

demographic and social conditions that resulted in the appearance of microlithic

assemblages apparently did not exist much before 20 kyr B.P.

Pattern in the Evidence for "Art" I believe this is most satisfactorily explained by adopting an information-

exchange perspective that views art as a monitor of the volume of information flow circulating through channels cut by alliance networks. More concretely, the

pattern is caused by (1) the closing of social networks during the LGM in the Franco-Cantabrian refugium due to an influx of people, with a concomitant rise in population density and increasing territoriality, followed by (2) the

subsequent relaxation of selective pressures favoring the expression of Wiessner's "emblemic style"-the parietal art is an example of emblemic style- during the Postglacial.

The Transition to Domestication Economies On any index of efficiency, full-blown domestication economies are

inefficient and labor-intensive; humans, on the other hand, are fundamentally lazy-they do not invest any more effort in the food quest than they have to. I see domestication of plants and animals as a "last resort" forced on those foragers who have run out of options for further dietary diversification. Domestication is

perhaps the ultimate form of dietary intensification, and reliance upon domesticates becomes the only remaining option, given a knowledge of domesticated plants and animals introduced from elsewhere. The ultimate cause of the transition is population-resource imbalances that, in the Iberian context, can be traced back more than 20,000 years, to the Last Glacial Maximum.

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Thirty Years of Mesolithic Research in Atlantic Coastal Iberia (1970-2000).

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Transcript of Thirty Years of Mesolithic Research in Atlantic Coastal Iberia (1970-2000).