CENIEH participates in research on more than 3,000 lithic artefacts recovered from the Cova Gran de Santa Linya site (Lleida), showing how anatomically modern human communities modified the selection, management and circulation of chert in response to technological, climatic and mobility changes over a period of 25,000 years.
Analysis of more than 3,000 lithic artefacts from the Cova Gran de Santa Linya site (Les Avellanes-Santa Linya, Lleida) shows that anatomically modern human communities occupying the southern Pyrenees during the Upper Palaeolithic used flint (chert) exclusively for tool production. The findings, published in the journal Quaternary International, indicate that raw-material selection was closely linked to technological changes, mobility organisation and the ways in which these groups interacted with the landscape.
The research, led by the Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social (IPHES), the Interdisciplinary Centre for Archaeology and the Evolution of Human Behaviour (ICArEHB) and the University of Barcelona (UB), in collaboration with CENIEH and the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB), focuses on an exceptional archaeological sequence documenting repeated human occupations from the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition through to the Late Glacial period.
The team analysed cores and retouched tools from 19 archaeological levels at Cova Gran, dated to between approximately 39,000 and 13,500 years ago, using an archaeopetrological approach that enabled the identification of the sedimentary origin of the chert artefacts and the proposal of potential procurement zones.
The study distinguishes two main groups of chert recurrently exploited throughout the sequence: evaporitic varieties (formed in hypersaline sedimentary environments), widely distributed across the Pre-Pyrenean region, and lacustrine varieties (formed in lacustrine sedimentary environments), present in several areas of the Ebro Basin and characterised by high knapping aptitude.
Although the principal procurement sources remained stable, the researchers document a progressive shift towards the predominant use of lacustrine chert from the Last Glacial Maximum onwards, around 25,000 years ago. This change coincided with a reorganisation of lithic technology geared towards the production of small-sized artefacts such as scrapers, truncations and projectile implements.
Long-distance chert
One of the study’s most significant findings is the identification of marine-origin chert from areas located more than 100 km from the site, including regions on the northern slopes of the Pyrenees and possibly south-western France.
The identification of long-distance chert coincides with the coldest phases documented at the site, indicating greater mobility across the Pyrenean territory or the existence of long-term contact networks. “The presence of long-distance chert in the form of retouched elements suggests that it may have been introduced into the Cova Gran site as part of toolkits or multifunctional tool sets carried by these populations during their movements,” the authors explain.
The Cova Gran de Santa Linya site has therefore become a key location for investigating human–landscape interactions in the southern Pyrenees. Its long archaeological sequence makes it possible to observe how, within the same territory, the dynamics of chert procurement and management changed according to the technological, social and cultural choices of prehistoric populations.
