Cultural continuities and discontinuities at the Neolithic transition in Eastern Iberia: an analysis of the morphometry
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(2020) 12:253
ORIGINAL PAPER
Cultural continuities and discontinuities at the Neolithic transition in Eastern Iberia: an analysis of the morphometry of geometric microliths Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau 1
&
Oreto García-Puchol 1
&
Stephen Shennan 2
Received: 8 April 2020 / Accepted: 8 September 2020 # Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract The main goal of this paper is to explore possible cultural continuities and discontinuities at the Neolithic transition in Eastern Iberia. To address this issue, we introduce a twofold methodology, consisting of Geometric Morphometrics and the use of the self-developed Geomeasure system, to examine evolutionary patterns in geometric microliths. These are a specific type of arrowhead shared by both the last hunter-gatherers and the first farmers from two reference sites in the region: Cueva de la Cocina and Cova de l’Or (Eastern Iberia). Although advances in research have contributed to a better comprehension of this process, there are still unanswered questions, especially when the study is approached from a regional perspective. Such is the case for the Neolithisation of the Eastern Iberian Peninsula, and the way in which the previous Mesolithic population interacted— if they interacted at all—with the first farmers. In this case, some sites present archaeological contexts that have been catalogued as acculturation contexts. This has traditionally been the case for phase C of Cueva de la Cocina (Spain), although recent research points to the possibility that the content of this specific deposit is the result of post-depositional processes. Here we try first to understand the cultural evolutionary patterns and relations between the different geometric microlith technocomplexes and, second, to address the specific problem of the interpretation of taphonomic disturbances in the archaeological record. We use the Cueva de l’Or and the Cueva de la Cocina for comparison, and our conclusions raise serious doubts about the existence of an acculturation phase at the latter. Keywords Mesolithic . Neolithic . Geometric microliths . Geometric Morphometrics . Geomeasure
Introduction Despite, or maybe because of, the great quantity of literature and effort produced on the subject, the process of Neolithisation in the Mediterranean still raises substantial de-
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-020-01204-0) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users. * Alfredo Cortell-Nicolau [email protected] 1
PREMEDOC Research Group, Departament de Prehistòria, Arqueologia i Història Antiga, Universitat de València, Av. Blasco Ibáñez, 28 46010 València, Spain
2
UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31-34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK
bate within the archaeological research community (Guilaine 2013; García-Puchol and Salazar García 2017). Even though the general patterns are generally understood and accepted, following the overall lines proposed by Ammerman and Cavalli-
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