Unraveling Early Holocene occupation patterns at El Arenal de la Virgen (Alicante, Spain) open-air site: an integrated palimpsest analysis

Abstract

Palimpsests are ubiquitous in the open-air archaeological record. Yet, integrated intra-site research strategies of palimpsest dissection to infer occupational histories, spatial behavioral patterns and site formation processes remain very exeptional in the Postglacial archaeology. In this work, we introduce a novel and integrated analytical framework of palimpsest dissection applied to the lithic assemblages of the Unit IV of El Arenal de la Virgen site, radiocarbon dated in two different occupation phases (9.3-9.1 k and 8.6-8.3 k cal BP). While our archaeostratigraphic analysis identified the absence of sterile layers between both phases, the lithic refits confirmed the good preservation of the spatial properties of the assemblage. Using different point-pattern analysis and geostatistical techniques, we further investigate the overall distribution pattern, the spatial correlation between lithic remains and occupation features according to different artifact categories, and the variability of spatial autocorrelation metrics. Our results show significant differences between both occupation phases: a lithic cache and few short-distance connections during the Phase 1; and a much more extensive occupation during the Phase 2, with hearth-related assemblages, a dwelling area and latent combustion loci (not identified during the excavation process) affected by trampling. Finally, we discuss the site struture and spatio-temporal dimesions of the lithic assemblages to conclude a behavioural pattern of different, and spatially recurrent, short-term camp occupation episodes. Built on explicit quantitative and reproducible standards, our research approach can be applied to other open-air sites to conduct comparative studies on open-air occupation patterns.

Impacts of Early Holocene environmental dynamics on open‐air occupation patterns in the Western Mediterranean: insights from El Arenal de la Virgen (Alicante, Spain)

“…To test the uneveness of the lithic assemblage's spatial distribution we performed a Clark–Evans aggregation test (Clark and Evans, 1954) based on the spatstat package (Baddeley et al ., 2015) in R (v.3.6.3) (R Core Team, 2020). The test yielded an aggregation index R = 0.80048 ( p = 0.002), quantitatively corroborating that the lithic remains were unevenly scattered throughout the excavation area (Rabuñal, 2021).…”

“…Works on lithic refitting (Rabuñal, 2021) allow the exclusion of long‐distance movements of lithic materials indicative of secondary deposition processes. To date, 38 sets of connections have been identified, consisting of 15 refits, 13 conjoins and 10 thermal conjoins.…”

“…Morpho‐technical analysis of the lithic assemblage (Rabuñal, 2021) showed a predominance of micro‐debris (<10 mm; 49.62%). Overall, lithic reduction was overwhelmingly dominated by flake production strategies: unifacial (unipolar and bipolar opposed), bifacial (orthogonal and multipolar centripetal), multifacial (orthogonal and multipolar) and bipolar on anvil.…”

“…Overall, the technical and typological characteristics of the lithic assemblage fit with those of the Mesolithic of Notched and Denticulated tradition (Alday, 2006), confirming the previous chrono‐cultural attribution (Fernández‐López de Pablo et al ., 2011). However, detailed techno‐typological analysis of the lithic assemblage revealed some differences between Phase 1 and Phase 2 (Rabuñal 2021, Rabuñal and Fernández‐López de Pablo, 2022). For Phase 1, we find a reduced set of retouched artefacts configured on large and thick (>8 mm) blanks (Fig.…”

“…analyses (Yanes and Fernández-López de Pablo, 2017). More detailed intra-site studies focused on detailed geoarchaeological analyses of features (Polo-Díaz et al, 2022), and the spatial distribution of lithic assemblages (Rabuñal et al, 2022) will be published elsewhere, providing additional evidence of site formation processes, site structure and behavioural patterns.…”