Spectroscopy and Geochemistry of chert. Reconstructing human mobility in the Pyrenees from the first Modern Humans to the last Pleistocene hunter-gatherers

In Palaeolithic archaeology, steep mountain ranges have been perceived as geographical barriers, impeding human mobility from the territories that flank them on both sides.

This is the case of the Pyrenean mountain chain, a key area for studying mobility and territoriality of prehistoric hunter-gatherers, especially during the last glaciation (c. 120.000 11.000 BP), due to its geographic location and harsh environmental conditions.

The Pyrenees were until recently considered by archaeologists as a complete hindrance to human mobility and the only possibility, it was thought, was through the less abrupt extremes.

However, in my earlier work I was able to suggest that humans may have crossed over the mountains by several alternative itineraries, proposing that the classic view is most probably wrong.

These works were based on a new approach to the analysis of prehistoric chert tools using geochemical methods and it is in this context that the SPEGEOCHERT project aims to investigate.

The project will innovatively employ an array of interdisciplinary methods to explore the possible routeways humans followed through the Pyrenees to overcome the rough milieu.

This pioneering approach will be based on portable, low-cost, non-destructive, fast and accurate techniques consisting on the use of reflectance spectroscopy combined with geochemistry and the application of multi-variate statistics and GIS to develop predictive modelling.

Through the analysis of large series of materials directly at the museums, the SPEGEOCHERT project will create a novel data corpus with accurate information related to the geological chert sources exploited by Palaeolithic groups.

The results obtained in this project will not only significantly broaden our knowledge on human adaptations to harsh ecological conditions and the understanding of mobility through mountains, but will also radically change the archaeological approach to the analysis of lithic raw materials.