Local or Exogenous? The Different Facets of Chert During the Gravettian at Vale Boi (Southwestern Portugal)

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

Hunter-gatherers relied strongly on lithic raw materials, making them essential to characterize mobility and land-use, raw material provisioning, technology, social organization, exchange, and the functioning of social networks. As such, the characterization of hunter-gatherer lifeways is often the result of the combination of data obtained from autochthonous and allochthonous raw materials. Ongoing raw material studies at Vale Boi (an archaeological site located in southwestern Iberia) show local and exogenous chert raw materials for its Gravettian occupations. Identifying patterns of raw material use during this techno-complex, and especially the possible existence of social networks based on exogenous raw materials, may be a key aspect to understanding the Early Upper Paleolithic expansion in south Portugal, especially when previous works have suggested a possible ethnographic boundary between hunter-gatherer groups. This paper presents the chert raw material analysis results from the Gravettian levels of Vale Boi from the Terrace area. The archaeological chert artifacts were analyzed through a multi-layer approach (macroscopy, petrography, and geochemistry) and compared to a regional reference collection. Technological data was combined with the raw material results. This allowed us to better characterize the behaviors of chert obtainment, and their place within the technological or social organization of Gravettian hunter-gatherer communities.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Local and/or Exotic Interactions: Symbols, Materials, and Societies   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

Keywords

Spatial Coverage

Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38775.0