Raw material provisioning and use throughout the Upper Palaeolithic at Vale Boi (SW Iberia)

Abstract

Hunter-gatherers relied strongly on lithic raw materials which make them key aspects to understand mobility and land-use, raw material provisioning and exchange. Currently, only a few studies exist on raw material exploitation during the Upper Paleolithic (UP) in Southwestern Iberia and much about the technology, economy and mobility of those populations is still unknown. With one of the most complete UP sequences in the region, well dated archaeological horizons and large lithic assemblages, the site of Vale Boi is ideal to understand how the hunter-gatherer groups throughout the different UP phases explored lithic resources and moved across the landscape. This paper presents the first results of a Ph.D. project targeting the characterization of siliceous rocks exploitation at Vale Boi throughout the UP levels. Archaeological samples were compared with geological samples recovered in southwestern Portugal through survey, using a combination of macroscopic classification and microscopic observation of thin sections. This allowed us to preliminary characterize several aspects of the cultural, technological, and economical organization of human groups through time.