Maria João Valente

Zooarchaeology in the Neolithic and Chalcolithic of Southern Portugal

Abstract Our knowledge of South Portugals Neolithic and Chalcolithic subsistence strategies is limited by scarce palaeobotanical evidence (restricted to the latter period) and irregular zooarchaeological data. This framework is also affected by post-depositional biases, unevenly represented sites throughout the territory (i.e. under/over representation of sites according to their functions) and published data with disparate objectives and analytic methodologies. Therefore, it comes as no surprise that a priori theoretical assumption dominates over empirically supported arguments on crucial aspects of the Neo–Chalcolithic time period, such as (1) the relative importance of domestic versus wild species at the Neolithic onset (cal ≈5500 BC), (2) the supposed predominance of caprines herding and cervid hunting among the economic practices of the megalith builders (cal ≈4000–3000 BC) or (3) the real impact of the ‘Secondary Products Revolution’ and its chronology (cal ≈3000 BC onwards?). Using existing publications and unpublished reports, we critically organise the available zooarchaeological data according to geographical and ecological sub-regions, in order to discuss it under uniform analytic procedures, evaluate current models and point out directions for future research.