A tale of two seas: Upper Paleolithic ecology in Vale Boi, southwestern Algarve (Portugal)
Investigador principal – Nuno Bicho
Equipa de investigação
Delminda Moura
Marina Évora
Hugo Veríssimo
John Lindly
João Cascalheira
João Marreiros
Juan Gibaja Bao
Rebecca Dean
Telmo Pereira
Tiina Manne
Resumo
Upper Paleolithic ecology in Iberia is known mainly from a few relatively confined areas: Portuguese Estremadura, Cantabria, Catalonia, Valencia and Eastern Andalusia. The cultural traits from each area seem to stand in isolation and very little research has been done in the intervening lands that would allow linking the early cultural dynamics on the Iberian Peninsula as a whole. The area between Gibraltar and Lisbon was represented by a particularly large gap in Upper Paleolithic occupation. This gap has been filled with the discovery of the rock-shelter of Vale Boi, the first of its kind in the Algarve (southern Portugal). The site presents a long chronological sequence with Early through Late Gravettian, Proto-Solutrean, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and Early Neolithic. It is rich in well preserved faunal remains (bone and marine shell) and wide variety of artifacts including chipped and ground stone, bone tools, and ornaments. Preliminary information from the faunal remains seems to indicate an early trend in resource intensification in the forms of expanding dietary breadth and rendering bone grease from the carcasses of large game animals. Testing of the site indicates a striking combination of cultural traits, including the presence of art, from the Mediterranean and Atlantic areas during the Gravettian and Solutrean phases, suggesting that Vale Boi, at the western end of the Gulf of Cadiz, lay at the cross-roads of two rather different ecological and cultural worlds – the Atlantic shore known only from Portuguese Estremadura, located north of Lisbon; and the Mediterranean coast well documented from the Valencia and Malaga Spanish districts. Both these areas are at a distance, as the crow flies, of over 300 km. Based on the site of Vale Boi, this project will examine in Southwest Portugal changes in ecology of the earliest modern humans, subsistence strategies, land use, social interaction and symbolic behavior, and in technological traits from the onset of Modern Humans at c. 30,000 to the end of Pleistocene, 10,000 years ago. It will also investigate the cultural relations and human contacts to both the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds of Iberia.
Total do financiamento - 64.495,00€
Entidade financiadora - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Período de funcionamento 1/6/2008 – 31/5/2010
Equipa de investigação
Delminda Moura
Marina Évora
Hugo Veríssimo
John Lindly
João Cascalheira
João Marreiros
Juan Gibaja Bao
Rebecca Dean
Telmo Pereira
Tiina Manne
Resumo
Upper Paleolithic ecology in Iberia is known mainly from a few relatively confined areas: Portuguese Estremadura, Cantabria, Catalonia, Valencia and Eastern Andalusia. The cultural traits from each area seem to stand in isolation and very little research has been done in the intervening lands that would allow linking the early cultural dynamics on the Iberian Peninsula as a whole. The area between Gibraltar and Lisbon was represented by a particularly large gap in Upper Paleolithic occupation. This gap has been filled with the discovery of the rock-shelter of Vale Boi, the first of its kind in the Algarve (southern Portugal). The site presents a long chronological sequence with Early through Late Gravettian, Proto-Solutrean, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and Early Neolithic. It is rich in well preserved faunal remains (bone and marine shell) and wide variety of artifacts including chipped and ground stone, bone tools, and ornaments. Preliminary information from the faunal remains seems to indicate an early trend in resource intensification in the forms of expanding dietary breadth and rendering bone grease from the carcasses of large game animals. Testing of the site indicates a striking combination of cultural traits, including the presence of art, from the Mediterranean and Atlantic areas during the Gravettian and Solutrean phases, suggesting that Vale Boi, at the western end of the Gulf of Cadiz, lay at the cross-roads of two rather different ecological and cultural worlds – the Atlantic shore known only from Portuguese Estremadura, located north of Lisbon; and the Mediterranean coast well documented from the Valencia and Malaga Spanish districts. Both these areas are at a distance, as the crow flies, of over 300 km. Based on the site of Vale Boi, this project will examine in Southwest Portugal changes in ecology of the earliest modern humans, subsistence strategies, land use, social interaction and symbolic behavior, and in technological traits from the onset of Modern Humans at c. 30,000 to the end of Pleistocene, 10,000 years ago. It will also investigate the cultural relations and human contacts to both the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds of Iberia.
Total do financiamento - 64.495,00€
Entidade financiadora - Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia
Período de funcionamento 1/6/2008 – 31/5/2010
