At the land's end: Marine resources and the importance of fluctuations in the coastline in the prehistoric hunter–gatherer economy of Portugal

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Abstract

This paper focuses on the importance of aquatic resources in economy and subsistence strategies during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic of Portugal. Modern theoretical biases in archaeology have led to a marginalization of marine resources and a dismissal of their use by Palaeolithic hunter–gatherers. Geological and archaeological data show that changes in the position of the coastline had a direct impact on the visibility of marine resources in the archaeological record. Marine regressions and transgressions have significantly altered the record of Pleistocene coastal settlement. Using recent studies on changes in upwelling intensity during the Last Glacial we offer a new perspective on Palaeolithic hunter–gatherer economy that emphasizes the importance of the coast as a focus of subsistence and settlement.

Introduction

The rarity of Pleistocene hunter–gatherer sites along the coasts of Western Europe led to a virtual consensus among archaeologists in the late 20th century that Palaeolithic people largely ignored this type of environment. Aquatic animals, especially molluscs, were perceived as fallback resources that people relied on to avoid starvation in times of terrestrial resource scarcity. Marine and estuarine economies, well-known from the Early Holocene, were seen as the result of technological “revolutions” and/or demographic pressure. The postglacial expansion of diet breadth visible in the archaeological record after global sea level rise was thought to suggest a new subsistence adaptation in human societies.

This ‘Tardiglacial Paradigm’ (Morales et al., 1998, Haws and Bicho, 2006), however, has begun to crumble in the face of new (and not so new) data, both archaeological (Stiner et al., 1999, Stiner et al., 2000, Bailey and Milner, 2002, Stiner, 2003, Bicho et al., 2004) and ethnographical (Pálsson, 1988, Pálsson, 1991, Erlandson, 2001). Recently, Erlandson (2001) and Bailey and Milner (2002), among others, have demonstrated that the archaeological record may be strongly biassed against early coastal sites. In a few places, older Pleistocene sites exist in areas of steep bathymetry or uplifted continental margins. Where the older coastal deposits are visible, marine resources are frequently present in the subsistence of hunter–gatherers, complex or not (see also Bailey and Flemming, 2008, Erlandson et al., 2008). This reality has transformed the perspectives of many hunter–gatherer researchers (Parkington, 2001, Bailey and Milner, 2002, Bailey and Craighead, 2003, Bailey, 2004a, Bailey, 2004b, Parkington et al., 2004).

In this paper, we will focus on the importance of marine coastal resources in the Pleistocene economy and subsistence strategies of Portugal. We will also examine certain features related to the presence or absence of marine and estuarine resources in Portugal, namely the evolution of the coastline and the effects of upwelling, and their importance in understanding and predicting site location and subsistence economies during the Palaeolithic. Finally, we will present a new model of prehistoric coastal hunter–gatherer economies in Portugal.

Section snippets

Archaeological perspectives on marine resource use by Late Pleistocene hunter–gatherers

Binford (1968) noted that a diverse and complex set of changes took place in human societies at the end of the Pleistocene: human diet appeared to show a significant increase in the number of food resources, including aquatic resources; and the introduction or development of new techniques of hunting, food storage and processing allowed a more intensive use of plants and animals. Both changes led to new patterns of mobility, settlement systems and land use generally. Flannery (1969) labelled

Exceptions to the rule

In a thorough review of aquatic adaptations, Erlandson (2001) concluded that the few coastal Pleistocene sites with evidence of marine resource exploitation share one feature: they are all located in areas of steep offshore bathymetry. This also seems true in Iberia: several places along the coast are marked by a steep bathymetry: Asturias and Cantabria, Eastern Andalucia and Gibraltar, and in Portugal the Western Algarve and the waters off Sesimbra and Nazaré. The Gibraltar Caves have yielded

Upwelling off the Portuguese coast

Perlman (1980) has observed that hunter–gatherer coastal adaptations most often appear along shallow continental shelves and upwelling zones where marine and estuarine ecosystems are most productive. Upwelling is the upward movement of deep, cold waters to the surface, to replace surface waters moved away from coastlines as a combined result of surface winds and the Earth's rotation. These deep waters bring nutrients from the seabed to the surface resulting in very productive conditions for

Sea level and climate

As in other areas of the North Atlantic, sea level dropped to −120 m off the coast of Portugal during the LGM, rose steadily up to −40 m just prior to the Dryas III cold snap, <11 kyr, dropped again to −60 m in the Younger Dryas, then rose rapidly and continuously until about 8 kyr, reaching a slightly higher level than present between 5 and 3 kyr, subsequently stabilizing at its present level (Dias, 1985, Dias et al., 2000). During the LGM, an extensive, flat, land platform would have extended

Conclusion

The traditional model in which marine resources become an important factor in human diet only in the very Late Tardiglacial or even in the Early Holocene, together with a general intensification of resources through diversification and specialization, seems now to be completely obsolete. It is clear that not only marine resources, including marine mammals, fish and shellfish, are present since at least 30 kyr. These were also complemented by a diversity of types of food that greatly improved

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank Alice Newton for her help with the technical aspects of upwelling systems. Naturally, all mistakes are ours alone. We would also like to thank the two anonymous reviewers who helped to clarify the text.

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