Santander, February 19th-22nd 2008 - Aranzadi

Magdalenian marine shells from El Horno Cave (Ramales, Cantabria, Spain) in the regional context
67
relationship is not well known, as several factors
seriously affect an ideal understanding of it. This is
the case of the environmental transformations mentioned
above. Above all, we know that the Flandrian
transgressive episode certainly affected the late
glacial coast. The main conclusion of this is that an
important part of the archaeological record corresponding
to the final Palaeolithic is missing.
Consequently, data from late Magdalenian coastal
sites is not available and it is not easy to assess the
relatively small volume of malacological remains, in
comparison with later periods. We may wonder if
we lack the rich malacological assemblages of the
truly coastal settlements, now submerged under
the sea or covered by sediments. In any case,
other especially significant data from the cultural
point of view, such as that provided by the study of
cave art, appears to prove that human societies at
the end of the Palaeolithic were fully familiar with the
marine environment (Fano et al. 2008).
The finds of marine malacological remains at a
montane site such as El Horno also provides significant
data for the analysis of the organizational
strategies of the hunter-gatherer groups being studied.
The marine malacofauna that has been analysed
appears to confirm that the Magdalenian
groups who occupied El Horno did not exploit the
marine environment from the settlement, as species
with dietary interest are rare at the site. This is
the usual situation at inland sites in the late
Magdalenian, and logically contrasts with the malacological
record at coastal sites, where taxa with
dietary interest predominate. Instead, the marine
malacofauna that has been found at El Horno was
used as the raw material to make shell beads,
which demonstrates that the Magdalenian groups
using the cave maintained a relationship with the
coastal environment. The available record shows
how the raw material was taken to the site, where all
parts of the chaîne opératoire have been documented:
unmodified gastropods, shells broken
during the manufacturing process, and beads with
and without use-wear marks. The coastal resources
were probably exploited from other sites nearer the
shore. In fact, preliminary information about the
seasonality of hunting at different settlements in the
Asón valley during the LFM, such as at El Horno
(late winter and early spring), El Mirón (late spring
and summer) and La Fragua (late summer and
autumn) (cf. Costamagno and Fano 2005, Marín
2008, Marín and González Morales 2007) is coherent
with a model of territorial management based
on mobility. This logistical and/or residential mobility
is responsible for the presence of the malacological
material at El Horno. Coastal sites like El Perro, La
Fragua (Figure 1) and other sites which have been
lost because of the changes to the environment,
may have been used by the same hunter-gatherer
groups who occupied El Horno.
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MUNIBE Suplemento - Gehigarria 31, 2010
S.C. Aranzadi. Z.E. Donostia/San Sebastián