Sesión 12. Demographic processes and cultural change : archaeological perspectives. Inroducción a la sesión

INTRODUCCIÓN A LA SESIÓN The contributions to this section resulted from papers presented in the session Demographic processes and cultural change: archaeological perspectives, held in the last day of the JIA 2010 Conference, at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. The starting point for this session, entirely devoted to the broad issue of demography in archaeology, was the existence of a group of young researchers whose research topics, despite the use of very different methodologies, points to the same direction: the study of demographic processes and the impact to the human cultural patterns over time. This session was an opportunity for us young researchers to exchange ideas and as a platform for discussion and inevitable maturation of theoretical and practical problems arisen in our own work. With this in mind, no particular area of study or cultural/chronological period was addressed to allow the contribution of a wider range of participants. This fact has permitted that such general issues like the implications of demography in the concept of territoriality, the role of paleopathology, and archaeology of health and disease in demographic interpretations, settlement patterns, population mobility, among others, were the main topics of discussion. Since some of the authors were unable to contribute with their texts to this chapter, here is a brief summary of their presentations: David Rodríguez Antón presented the settlement patterns in the high mountain context of the central Pyrenees, during the time spam of c. 9.5 to 4 ka Cal BP. His work is based on data from a group of sites located in the d’Aigüestortes i l’Estany de Sant Maurici national park. In short, Rodriguez reported an increase in human presence between 5 400 and 4 300 Cal BP, after which, the caves and rock-shelters are abandoned. This phenomenon can be, to the author, Sesión 12 DEMOGRAPHIC PROCESSES AND CULTURAL CHANGE: ARCHAEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES Coordinadores/as: João Cascalheira 117 only explained by new economic and social dynamics, as part of a feedback to climate change. The main focus of the second presentation was also the Pyrenees, this time on the continuity or change in the settlement of the western part of the mountain. The main goal of David Garcia Casas in this work is to ascertain whether the variability in the archaeological sites found in successive archaeological campaigns in the region is conditioned by the morphology of the highly rugged terrain or otherwise responds to various types of land use and social configuration of the human populations over time. Garcia uses a settlement model based on ethnographic data from the nomadic animal husbandry from the same area. Why do some sites from Western Europe, that clearly date from the Upper Paleolithic, fit in a chronological period when Neanderthals remain in Iberia? This was the starting question for Telmo Pereira presentation, and the answer seems to be a demographic one: the SW sites dated between 41 and 28ka BP may represent sets of preliminary surveys performed by scout groups, which may have used the Tagus and Guadalquivir valleys and the Southern edge of Algarve coast, probably in demand for flint. This would explain why these archaeological sites are located in regions of flint sources; have few artifacts (short‐term occupations by small groups); have different artifact repertoires (show regional diversity?); and didn't have continuity in time. João Cascalheira presentation was a very brief review of the facts available for the aspects concerning territoriality and social networks during the final moments of the so‐called Levantine Solutrean. It also intended to give some perspectives for the future on the comprehension of this theme, based, mainly, on the PhD project The Mediterranean influence in the social networks of Final Solutrean of Iberia. The main goal of this project is to help to define the influence and operating modes of the networks of contacts, visible in the stylistic, typological, and technological aspects that characterize each group of hunter‐gatherers of the Mediterranean Final Solutrean. The fifth communication was Inga Kretschmer’s, about the demography of hunter‐gatherer populations in the time period of the Late Upper Palaeolithic. Her work tries to determine the population density and the sources, trajectories and pull‐and push‐factors of migratory events. A method based on GIS techniques is being developed to scale up archaeological data from key sites and key regions up to macro‐scaled contextual and continental areas. The results should be controlled by ethnographic parameters and ecological factors, especially raw material procurement. Carolina Mendonça presentation was based in data from her own master’s thesis whose main focus was the lithic industries of a small set of Magdalenian sites in Southern Portugal. In this communication she emphasizes the role of lithic analysis in the comprehension of territoriality and landscape use by the societies of hunter-gatherers that inhabited the region from 16 000 to 9 000 BP. The identification of sites with, apparently, different functionalities have also permitted to reconstruct, in a general manner, the logistical settlement system. The presentation of Célia Gonçalves was the second one based in GIS analysis, this time with the main goal of identifying new Mesolithic sites in the Muge area (Portugal). In paleodemo118 graphic terms the model allowed Gonçalves to better understand the behavior, in what respects the settlement dynamics and spatial organization, of the human communities that arrived at the Tagus valley forced by climatic alterations occurring at approximately 8 200 Cal BP. The Neolithic in the Great Mediterranean context was the title of Haidé Martins communication. In brief she presented the project for her PhD project which main questions are: Does the enlarged Mediterranean Europe database display a similar pattern to the one detected by João Zilhão favouring the maritime introduction of Neolithic in Iberia? Do data (density, timing and cultural influence) favour a demic input to Iberia rooted in Italy or in the Near East? Was Neolithic dispersion in North Africa as fast as the one in the North Mediterranean coast? Is the maritime route a major way of Neolithic diffusion along all the Mediterranean Basin? The last, but not least, presentation was done by Vanessa Campanacho and it focused a more physical anthropological aspect of demography in archaeology. The main topic of the communication was the importance of markers of occupational stress in human remains as a proxy to the identification of possible differences in status, according to age and sex, in populations of the past. The examples were given from a collection of skeletons from the XIX and XX centuries. 119