Central Place Foraging Models and Early Holocene Coastal Adaptations in the Western Mediterranean

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations" session, at the 84th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

In this paper we use a Central Place Foraging Model to evaluate the impact of environmental changes on subsistence and mobility strategies in the Mesolithic period in the Western Mediterranean. We focus on the analysis of the of El Collado site because of its position in the interface between a foothill and the Mediterranean coastal plains. Recent geomorphological studies have allowed us to reconstruct the Early Holocene sea shore position and its impact on coastal ecosystems, showing a progressive contraction of lagoon biotopes. In this changing scenario, we use the rich bioarchaeological record of the El Collado site (faunal, mollusk and fish bone assemblages) to test predictions of the Central Place Foraging model. On one hand, we produce prey abundance estimates within the site catchment at three different Mesolithic phases. On the other hand, we compare these estimations with bioarchaeological empirical data. Our results suggest differences in human foraging strategies (in terms of prey rank, acquisition and processing costs of both prey and mollusks) from the Early to the Late Mesolithic. These transformations may be driven by a dramatic drop in environmental carrying capacity, likely forcing a change in the function of the site within the regional settlement system.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Human Behavioral Ecology at the Coastal Margins: Global Perspectives on Coastal & Maritime Adaptations   •
• Society for American Archaeology 84th Annual Meeting, Albuquerque, NM (2019)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 24617