Joan Bernabeu Aubán

El mundo funerario en el horizonte Cardial valenciano: Un registro oculto

Hasta la fecha, ha sido opinion generalizada entre los investigadores valencianos que no se dispone de datos referentes al registro funerario del Neolitico Antiguo Cardial en nuestras tierras. Esta ausencia de informacion, obviamente, abria una duda sobre la calidad de la muestra de yacimientos disponibles en nuestro ambito de estudio. La abundante documentacion existente para momentos mas recientes de la secuencia hacia resaltar aun mas este desequilibrio. La revision que hemos realizado de la documentacion disponible, nos permite proponer una hipotesis totalmente contraria. La aparente ausencia de informacion “clara” hemos de achacarla a la utilizacion de los mismos ambitos (pequenas cuevas, grietas y gateras) a lo largo de toda la secuencia neolitica, lo que ha provocado la destruccion de los niveles mas antiguos, pertenecientes al mundo cardial. La asociacion en diversos yacimientos de materiales cardiales con niveles de enterramiento mas recientes puede leerse en este sentido. Este comportamiento es el mismo que puede rastrearse en otras regiones como Portugal (Caldeirâo, Almonda) o Francia (Unang, Gazel). La perduracion del uso de estas covachas puede informarnos de una situacion de gran continuismo y sedentarizacion de los grupos neoliticos valencianos.

FROM THE MESOLITHIC TO THE NEOLITHIC on the Mediterranean Coast of the Iberian Peninsula

This paper summarizes early Holocene cultural sequences, economic strategies, and social dynamics on the Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula. Recent research in the central-southern regions of Valencia provides important diachronic information, particularly for discerning the nature of the shift from a hunter-gatherer lifestyle to agriculture. If biogeographic conditions played a leading role in determining exploitation strategies, then recognizing distinctive social responses is crucial for understanding the impact of the changes that occurred.

Alternative Stories of Agricultural Origins: The Neolithic Spread in the Iberian Peninsula

The spread of agriculture from the Near East to Europe has long been a subject of intense archaeological study and debate in light of the social and economic changes that occurred and were set in motion as a result of this transition. Despite the attention paid to this important process, a consensus is far from being reached. Perhaps for these reasons, new methods and theoretical approaches have often been applied to the questions surrounding the spread of agriculture first. Recently, computational modeling has emerged as a promising technique for the study of the origins of agriculture. Our approach employs an agent-based computational model of agricultural spread for the Iberian Peninsula and utilizes a substantial radiocarbon database. This method allows for us to test multiple hypotheses about the manner in which agriculture spread, where it may have spread from and to focus on the critical evaluation of the available chronological record and its effects upon our results.

Spatial and Temporal Diversity During the Neolithic Spread in the Western Mediterranean: The First Pottery Productions

Actual research into the neolithization process and the development of farming communities in the Western Mediterranean reveals a diverse and complex cultural landscape. Dispersal routes and rhythm of diffusion of the agro-pastoral economy, Mesolithic inheritance, regional interactions between communities, and functional adaptations all have to be explored to trace how Mediterranean societies were reshaped during this period. The different pottery traditions that accompany the Neolithic spread and its economic development are of course interconnected (the “impressed ware”), but they also show some degree of polymorphism. This variability has been variously interpreted, but rarely quantified and evaluated. We propose in this chapter to focus on the very first step of neolithization in the Western Mediterranean (c. 6000–5400 cal. BC), and to consider the variability observed in pottery decoration, along with some technical aspects, from Southern Italy to Southern Spain. Then we discuss these results in an attempt to understand if the observed variability in time and space could be explained as a result of the combined effects of cultural drift and hitchhiking hypothesis, within the framework of a demic expansion.

A view of the vegetation and economic exploitation of the forest in the Late Neolithic sites of Les Jovades and Niuet (Alicante, Spain)

SummaryThe results of the charcoal analysis obtained in two open air sites of the Late Neolithic, although contrasting with what is known so far about their economy, as well as with the results of different palaeoamblental studies undertaken in other sites, mainly caves with long sequences, within the same area or in other near areas, form the main interest of this paper. We will begin presenting the data pertaining to both sites individually which, in the final part, will be assessed in order to reach a better understanding of the relationship between men and their natural environment during the Neolithic period.

Iberian Neolithic Networks: The Rise and Fall of the Cardial World

Recent approaches have described the evolutionary dynamics of the first Neolithic societies as a cycle of rise and fall. Several authors, using mainly c14 dates as a demographic proxy, identified a general pattern of a boom in population coincident with the arrival of food production economies followed by a rapid decline some centuries afterwards in multiple European regions. Concerning Iberia, we also noted that this phenomenon correlates with an initial development of archaeological entities (i.e., ‘cultures’) over large areas (e.g. the Impresso-Cardial in West Mediterranean), followed by a phase of ‘cultural fragmentation’ by the end of Early Neolithic. These results in a picture of higher cultural diversity as an effect of more limited spread of cultural artifacts. In this work we propose to apply a network approach to the analysis of material culture. In particular, we consider the spatiotemporal patterns of material culture as an emergent effect of interaction processes acting locally. As recent research has pointed out, the spatiotemporal variability of material culture is an emergent phenomena resulting of individual and group interactions whose structure resembles those of spatially-structured complex Networks. Our results suggest that the observed global patterns could be explained by the network dynamics, specially by structural (measured as the Betweenness Centrality) and geographical position of some nodes. The appearance and disappearance of nodes in specific positions correlates with the observed changes in the pattern of material culture distribution throughout the Early Neolithic (c. 7700-6700 cal BP) in East Iberia. In our view, this could be explained by the especial role played by those nodes facilitating or limiting the information flow over the entire network. Network growth and posterior fragmentation seem to be the key drivers behind these dynamics.

Las campañas de excavación de 2010 y 2011 en el yacimiento neolítico del Mas d’Is (Penàguila, Alacant)

Las campanas de 2010 y 2011 en el yacimiento Neolitico del Mas d’Is han venido a complementar los numerosos datos conocidos hasta la actualidad. En las mismas se ha podido documentar ampliamente la morfologia de las estructuras que veniamos interpretando como fosos, por un lado; y, por otro, se ha avanzado en el conocimiento de la secuencia cronocultural del yacimiento al encontrar episodios que hasta el momento estaban pocos representados.