Alejandro PrietoUniversity of Barcelona | UB · Departament of History and Archaeology
Alejandro Prieto
PhD
Postdoc Rearcher working at the SPEGEOCHERT ERC project
About
55
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Introduction
I am postdoctoral researcher at the ERC-StG SPEGEOCHERT, from the SERP and IAU, University of Barcelona. I am researching lithic raw material in Palaeolithic contexts applying a wide scope of geoarchaeological techniques. After having worked with quartzites in different chronologies and geographies, it is time to characterise Chert at the Pyrenees
Publications
Publications (55)
Quartzite was the second most-often used lithic raw material in Europe in the Palaeolithic. However, this rock has not been characterized fully from the geo-archaeological point of view. This study characterizes, defines and determines types of quartzite in northern Spain through a methodology that integrates petrography, digital image processing a...
Several isolated studies have tried to understand quartzite from an archaeological perspective by applying two different methodological approaches. The first one is based on non-destructive characterisation, aiming to understand human procurement and management of quartzite, without solid geoarchaeological criteria. The second characterised the mat...
The new excavations carried out at the site of Troisdorf-Ravensberg in 2015 have brought to light an essential part of Neanderthal daily life: the procurement mechanism of lithic raw material. The first hypothesis to understand this site propounds that it was used as a quartzite workshop or a quarry site where extractive and first knapping activiti...
Raw material characterization in Paleolithic archaeology has widened our knowledge of Middle Paleolithic societies. Procurement of raw material, specifically flint, has allowed the tracing of the mobility of both stones and people, as well as selective processes to obtain specific types or even extraction activities. The analysis of quartzite has a...
The consideration of quartzite as a secondary raw material has relegated in-depth research of this raw material in favour of such other rocks as flint or obsidian. The latter two are the most researched raw materials because of the information derived from their study: long-distance transport of rocks and mobility of people. In contrast, informatio...
The characterisation of abiotic resources has constituted a major topic in Prehistoric Archaeology since the 50s of the previous Century. Inferring human mobility, especially if the distance is high, still constitutes the main output of lithic raw material research. Furthermore, in the last decades, the characterisation of abiotic resources is dive...
La monografía que aquí presentamos incluye trabajos presentados y discutidos en el curso del Primer Encuentro Arqueológico «Oñatiko Unibertsitatea»: Las materias primas líticas en la Prehistoria del Pirineo y la Región Cantábrica, bajo el marco del convenio de colaboración entre la Universidad del País Vasco /Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea y el Ayun...
El trabajo que presentamos tiene un doble objetivo. El primero es el de presentar la sección de cuarcitas de la Litoteka de la UPV /EHU , cómo está organizada y los retos de futuro de la misma. El segundo objetivo es el de mostrar cómo se ha realizado la adquisición de datos de la litoteca a través de la prospección geoarqueológica. En este sentido...
Lithic Raw Materials during the Prehistory of Cantabrian and Pyrenean regions
The mobility of objects and the people behind them constitutes the most outstanding topic addressed by lithic sourc-ing in Palaeolithic Archaeology. The historiography generally highlights the discovery of the longest contact in a determined period or region, but also a broad historical construct consisting of a continuum evolutionary trend towards...
Raw materials and resources studies have become a basic source of information to understand Prehistoric humans’ mobility and inter-group interactions. In Prehistoric Archaeology, just as nowadays and in historical times, the furthest raw material -representing the longest mobility, interchange or trade route- is often an argument to highlight archa...
Le silex est la principale matière première lithique utilisée dans la Préhistoire du continent européen et c'est une ressource fondamentale dans les circuits économiques et sociaux des groupes de chasseurs-cueilleurs pendant le Paléolithique supérieur de la région cantabrique (nord de l'Espagne). Sa préférence incontestable par rapport aux autres r...
The lithic assemblage studied here comes from the space known as the Área de Estancia in Tito Bustillo Cave (Ribadesella, Asturias, Spain), a representative Magdalenian site. The remains were found in Sub-level 1c2 in the Lower Complex (1LC), which was excavated by J.A. Moure Romanillo from 1981 to 1983 and is associated with abundant evidence of o...
CAST: La cuarcita es la segunda materia prima lítica en importancia cuantitativa en la Región Cantábrica a lo largo del Paleolítico. A pesar de ello, su estudio desde perspectivas geoarqueológicas no ha sido habitual en los últimos 30 años de investigaciones prehistóricas. Por el contrario, en estas tres décadas, el análisis del sílex en la Penínsu...
The increasing approaches to non-flint lithic raw materials are widening our understanding of the economy around lithic resources by prehistoric societies. The characterization of stone using geoarchaeological disciplines, the identification of technological features on stone artefacts, and the spatio-temporal organization of lithic reduction seque...
The increasing approaches to non-flint lithic raw materials are widening our understanding of the economy around lithic resources by prehistoric societies. The characterisation of stone using geoarchaeological disciplines, the identification of technological features on stone artefacts, and the spatio-temporal organisation of lithic reduction seque...
published in: Bonner Jahrbücher 2021, 221, 2022 ,3-64
will be free to open access in the course of 2024 here: https://journals.ub.uni-heidelberg.de/index.php/bjb/issue/archive
The Cantabrian Region is a broad area characterised by two main geographical essences:
mountains and coast. On the contrary, from a geological standpoint, this region
is very heterogeneous due to the different environments represented, organised
through a West to the East general chronological gradation from the Precambrian to
the Neogene, promotin...
Geoarchaeological field survey constitutes a basic tool to understand the places where determine lithic raw material was procured or even quarried by past humans. Besides, and as most specialist aware, several issues can arise when trying to find these places. This is especially true in places where human impact, especially in recent times, have st...
The increase, in quantitative and qualitative terms, of research attending to the geological nature of rocks found in archaeological contexts is changing our perspectives about social and economic territories articulated by Palaeolithic societies in the Cantabrian Region. Practically the only raw material researched in a solid geoarchaeological app...
During the last twenty years, researches that address raw material characterisation based on a solid geoarchaeological study have been widening the understanding of Upper Palaeolithic societies in the Cantabrian Region. Nevertheless, there is an almost complete
lack of information of these kinds of investigation in the western part of this area mot...
This paper is divided into three sections. The first section describes the historiographic evolution of the study of prehistoric lithic raw materials in the Basque Crossroads (in the north of the Iberian Peninsula) during the last three decades. The second section explains the currently available information about geological outcrops of flint in th...
Como ya recogimos en la editorial de la propuesta monográfica de este número, Arqueología y Trabajo, en esta sección pretendemos reflexionar, no sólo acerca de las relaciones laborales y su materialización en términos materiales, sino también, sobre la realidad socio-laboral en la Arqueología del presente. Este trabajo, realizado desde el Comité Ed...
The consideration of quartzite by prehistorian as a secondary raw material has avoided in-depth research of this raw material as other rocks, such as flint or obsidian. The two latter
ones are the better studied raw materials because of the information derived from its study: long-transport of rocks and mobility of people. In contrast, the informat...
The development of raw material characterisation in Palaeolithic Archaeology in the last fifty years has widened our knowledge about the societies who inhabited Europe in the past. The characterisation of raw material, specially flint, has allowed defining the mobility of stones and people, selective processes to obtain specific varieties and proto...
Here we present the first results provided from the geo-archaeological characterisation of the quartzites from the site of Ravensberg-Troisdorf. This location is an open-air site situated in the village of Troisdorf, in the North Rhine-Westfalia. The site was excavated in one campaign during the summer of 2015 and preliminary techno-typological res...
The development of raw material characterisation in Palaeolithic Archaeology in the last fifty years has widened our knowledge about the societies that inhabited Europe in the past. The characterisation of raw material, specially flint, has allowed defining the mobility of stones and people, selective processes to obtain specific varieties and prot...
Quartzite was the second most frequently used lithic raw material in Europe in the Palaeolithic. However, this rock has not been fully characterised from the geoarchaeological point of view. Nevertheless, the characterisation of quartzite from petrological perspectives has been attempted by diverse geologists in the last decades. These researches o...
Digital technologies have numerous applications in archaeology ranging from the documentation of the archaeological evidence and the analysis of research data to the presentation of results for a wider audience. This volume consists of various studies on the use of methods such as LiDAR (light detection and ranging), archaeological prospection, vis...
This paper presents a new Lower Palaeolithic lithic assemblage recovered from the Urrúnaga reservoir (Álava, Basque Country, Spain). The collection consists of 70 artefacts, which have been analysed according to the petrological, modal-morphological (retouching structures), technological and metrical structures following the Analytical Typology app...
Despite the progress made in recent years, we knew few aspects of the macro- behavior of the Paleolithic societies. Even lower is our information on decisions and conditions that led these groups to settle and/or move along the geography. Fortunately, the recent increment of the interest in paleogeographic analysis, the development of new theoretic...
Studies on lithic resource management –mainly flint– by prehistoric groups south of the western Pyrenees have significantly increased during the past decades. These studies usually focus on identifying outcrops and characterising the different varieties found at archaeological sites. However, the understanding of mobility and territorial management...
It has traditionally been thought that movement of human groups across the Pyrenees would have been difficult in the Palaeolithic, although there are data contradicting this view. It may even be proposed that a Pyrenean region existed in the Palaeolithic with specific cultural traits and a series of sites, especially in the Magdalenian. The existen...
Las actas que aquí reseñamos, suponen la materialización del encuentro científico titulado “Seis décadas de Tipología Analítica. Simposio en Homenaje a Georges Laplace”; organizado por el Grupo de Investigación en Tipología Analítica (GITA) en la Universidad del País Vasco/Euskal Herriko Unibertsitatea (UPV/EHU) entre los días 13 y 15 de noviembre...
Recibido el 14 de marzo de 2013. Aceptado el 13 de septiembre de 2013 Resumen. El tránsito entre el final del Gravetiense y el inicio del Solutrense en la Península Ibérica es, en tér-minos geográficos, cronológicos y formales, una cuestión aún por resolver. Este trabajo tiene por objetivo arrojar la mayor cantidad de información, desde el punto de...
Workshop Cuaternario (Bizkaia Aretoa, Bilbao)
La transición del Paleolítico medio al superior en Europa está basada en un marco cronológico viciado por diversos problemas historiográficos, caracterizado por la disparidad de fechas y marcado por la falta de curvas de calibración exactas que permitan un correcto tratamiento de los datos. Ante esto, planteamos un nuevo marco cronológico basado en...
