Santander, February 19th-22nd 2008 - Aranzadi

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F. IGOR GUTIÉRREZ & MANUEL GONZÁLEZ
Sella 1914), and later in other caves in the area, such
as Cueto de la Mina or Balmori (Vega del Sella 1916),
he established the stratigraphic position and the main
characteristics of this period. Thus, the Asturian is
characterized as being a culture situated between
the Palaeolithic and the Neolithic, and having noticeable
quantities of marine molluscs in its deposits, as
well as the characteristic Asturian picks (Fig. 1). From
a geographic point of view, Vega del Sella himself
defined the Asturian territory as that extended along
the coastal strip between Oviedo and Santander, with
a nuclear area around Llanes, in Eastern Asturias.
The hypothesis supported by Vega del Sella
was contradicted in the mid-20 th century by Jordá
(1959), who adapted Crusafont’s “karstic rejuvenation
theory” to attribute the Asturian shell middens
in cave mouths to the Lower Palaeolithic. This theory
was based on the interpretation of concreted
remains of middens in the walls and ceilings of
cave mouths as evidence of cycles of deposit and
erosion. Asturian deposits had been eroded in an
early date during a humid period of karstic reactivation,
leaving only concreted patches in caves
where Middle and Upper Palaeolithic layers were
subsequently deposited. This interpretation
implied an Early Palaeolithic date for the Asturian.
From the 1960s, the introduction of new radiocarbon
dating techniques by American researchers
contributed to the solution of this chronological
problem. Thus, Clark (1976) corroborated,
through radiocarbon dating and a re-evaluation of
the stratigraphic evidence, the hypothesis proposed
by Vega del Sella, who situated the Asturian
in the Mesolithic (≈ 9000 - 6000 BP). Once the
chronological problem was solved, following research
has focused on explaining the Asturian ways
of life, within the framework of processual theories
that were being introduced by Anglo-Saxon researchers
(Bailey 1973, Clark 1976, Straus 1979).
These theories had a clear influence on the new
generations of Spanish researchers who adopted
the new perspectives for the study of the Asturian
during the 1980s (González Morales 1982). Since
1986, the study of the Asturian decreased in
terms of scientific production, as only some academic
works (Craighead 1995, Fano 1998,
Gutiérrez 2008) and synthesis articles (Bailey and
Craighead 2003, González 1989, 1996, Fano and
González 2004) were produced, and only a few
field archaeological research projects were
carried out (Arias et al. 2007 a, b).
The introduction of processual archaeology in
the region implied not only the adoption of new
methods and research techniques, but also a
stronger concern with the analysis of settlement
patterns, initiating a wide debate around the relationship
between the Asturian and the Azilian.
Straus (1979) proposed the contemporaneity of
both of them on the basis of the partial overlapping
of the available radiocarbon dates; differences
were explained in terms of complementary functionality:
Azilian occupations represented the
terrestrial hunting heritage of Late Palaeolithic in
multipurpose sites, while Asturian middens evidenced
a coastal adaptation with occupations
specialized in marine resources, culminating the
trend to diversification also visible in Final
Pleistocene times. Later, González (1989), with a
larger database of radiocarbon dates and the evaluation
of stratigraphic information, concluded that
Figure 1. Different views of an Asturian pick from Mazaculos II.
MUNIBE Suplemento - Gehigarria 31, 2010
S.C. Aranzadi. Z.E. Donostia/San Sebastián