Recent excavations and radiocarbon work conducted at Cocina Cave (Valencia region, Eastern Iberia) provide new insights into the transition from foraging to farming in the eastern Iberian Peninsula ...between 8000 and 7300 cal yrs. BP. Cocina cave was discovered in 1940 and excavated by L. Pericot from 1941 to 1945. J. Fortea continued excavations in the 70s. Despite early international recognition and great promise of significance, the materials recovered from these excavations have only been partially analyzed and published. A new project started in 2012 is focused on these cave deposits with the main goal of understanding the occupation sequence during the neolithization process in the Western Mediterranean. The project includes a complete analysis of cultural material and biological remains of the previous excavations and integrates a 3D reconstruction of the stratigraphy and spatial analysis of the recorded artifact distributions. The results presented in this paper highlight the chronological position of materials deposited by the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers in Cocina cave based on data from the 1941 and 1945 trenches.
We applied taphonomic analysis combined with geostatistical approaches to investigate the hypothesis that Cocina cave (Eastern Iberia) represents an acculturation context for the appearance of ...Neolithic Cardial pottery. In the 1970s, Fortea suggested that this important site was a prime example of acculturation because of the presence of early Neolithic pottery in late Mesolithic contexts. Since that time Cocina cave has been heralded as an example of indigenous hunter-gatherers incorporating Neolithic cultural elements into their lifeways. We analyzed the area excavated by Fortea in the 1970s by digitizing archaeological records and testing the spatial distribution of artifacts using geostatistical analysis and high-resolution AMS radiocarbon dating. We contextualized the findings by discussing key issues of archaeological depositions with the goal to better understand the palimpsest that usually occur in prehistoric sequences. Our analysis indicates that the mixture of Mesolithic and Neolithic materials resulted from taphonomic processes rather than acculturation.
In landscapes whose surface has been modified by terracing and other agricultural land-use, the spatial and temporal patterning of prehistoric settlement can be difficult to detect using traditional, ...site-orientated archaeological survey methods, especially for small-scale societies. In these contexts, methods that can reveal occupational patterns at landscape scales, without the need to pinpoint specific sites of human occupation, can be especially useful. We employ a stratified, randomly selected patch-based survey strategy to examine socio-ecological dynamics from the Middle Paleolithic through Bell Beaker (Chalcolithic) periods within the Canal de Navarrés, eastern Spain. We divide the study region into survey strata according to differences in topography and vegetation communities and use a random selection of demarcated, terraced fields as data collection patches. All survey data is digitally recorded using tablets in the field, creating a streamlined and more accurate workflow, where observations of artifacts, soils, ground visibility, and photographs are georeferenced and ready for analysis in a GIS. Surface artifact densities, estimated from sampled patches, are used to generate prehistoric land-use maps and empirical Bayesian methods allow us to track shifts in occupational patterns through time. Regional reference collections of well-dated lithic artifacts provide the “prior knowledge” required to make estimates of the probability of prehistoric occupation in each sampled patch. This combination of field and analytical methods makes possible the study of regional-scale land-use dynamics in agriculturally modified landscapes.
This study investigates the stratigraphical sequence of Cocina Cave (Spain) employing and testing for the first time the capability of rare earth elements as markers of human activities in caves. ...Located in Dos Aguas (Valencian Community, Spain), Cocina Cave is characterized by the presence of several Holocene archaeological deposits from the final Mesolithic to the present day and is a pivotal site for understanding the socio‐ecological dynamics of the last hunter‐gatherer inhabitants of the Iberian Peninsula and the transition to pastoral and agricultural economies in the Western Mediterranean. However, the identification of strata from particular time‐periods in the cave is often difficult due to the homogeneity of layers, the poor archaeological record in some strata and the presence of severe disturbance phenomena. The methodological approach of this study consisted of cross‐referencing rare earth elements and other chemical markers with the archaeological stratigraphical interpretation, in an attempt to not only support the identification of the anthropic contribution to the formation of Cocina Cave strata, but also to characterize and confirm different natural and occupational episodes, particularly those associated with hunter‐gatherer, early agriculturalist, and shepherd activities. Sediments were collected from different excavation areas and analysed for major elements, trace elements, rare earth elements (REE), soil organic matter (SOM) amounts and pH. Multivariate statistics were employed to group samples according to their elemental profile, and these were then compared to the archaeological temporal interpretation. The obtained results showed that REE amount and fractionation geochemical processes were regulated by carbonates, phosphates and pH. The use of REE as markers was particularly useful as their concentrations and their calculated ratios and anomaly distributions were demonstrated to be highly consistent with the archaeological stratigraphical interpretation.
A methodological proposal was developed for the study of prehistoric siliceous artefacts which includes the use of smartphone photography as an analytical tool. Different kinds of materials (cherts, ...rock crystal and quartzite) were sampled from the lithic assemblage of La Calvera rock-shelter (Camaleño, Spain), chosen as a case study. Each sample was photographed with a smartphone and colour features were compared with portable and non-destructive standardised techniques including visible spectrophotometry, Raman, diffuse reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy and portable X-ray fluorescence. The obtained results suggest that smartphone image analysis is a reliable approach to characterise siliceous rocks and that it can be a valuable, cheap and fast method especially suitable for the first screening of large lithic assemblages.
The agricultural way of life spreads throughout Europe via two main routes: the Danube corridor and the Mediterranean basin. Current archaeological literature describes the arrival to the Western ...Mediterranean as a rapid process which involves both demic and cultural models, and in this regard, the dispersal movement has been investigated using mathematical models, where the key factors are time and space. In this work, we have created a compilation of all available radiocarbon dates for the whole of Iberia, in order to draw a chronological series of maps to illustrate temporal and spatial patterns in the neolithisation process. The maps were prepared by calculating the calibrated 14C date probability density curves, as a proxy to show the spatial dynamics of the last hunter-gatherers and first farmers. Several scholars have pointed out problems linked with the variability of samples, such as the overrepresentation of some sites, the degree of regional research, the nature of the dated samples and above all the archaeological context, but we are confident that the selected dates, after applying some filters and statistical protocols, constitute a good way to approach settlement spatial patterns in Iberia at the time of the neolithisation process.
In this paper, we describe the radiocarbon dataset compiled in the context of the project HAR2015-68962 EVOLPAST: 'Dinámicas evolutivas y patrones de variabilidad cultural de los últimos ...cazadores-recolectores y el primer Neolítico en el este peninsular (7000–4500 cal. BC)' funded by the Spanish government. The dataset offers the most complete and public radiocarbon dataset focus on the Neolithic Transition in the Iberian Peninsula. Funding statement: The data collection was funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness grant HAR2015-68962-P to Oreto García Puchol & Joan Bernabeu. SPG is supported by Spanish Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness, Postdoctoral research programme 'Juan de la Cierva' (grant number: FJCI-2016-30588).
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