Management and determination of lithic raw materials in the archaeological sequence of el Cierro Cave (Ribadesella, Asturias, Spain)

Abstract

El Cierro Cave (Fresnu, Ribadesella, Asturias) is located at the mouth of the Sella River. It was discovered at the end of the fifties of the last century and studied by F. Jordá Cerdá between 1958 and 1959, by this researcher and A. Gómez Fuentes between 1977 and 1979, and by E. Álvarez Fernández in 2016. The study of the archaeological materials recovered in the last two mentioned interventions, together with the dating of more than thirty samples using the Carbon-14 method, has allowed specifying the occupations that took place in the cave between ca. 45,000-9,000 cal BP. In the different archaeological levels dating from the Mousterian to the Mesolithic, including the Aurignacian, the Gravettian, the Solutrean, the Magdalenian and the Azilian, highlights the great abundance of remains of biotic and abiotic origin. This poster presents the first results of the analysis of lithic raw materials in general for the complete archaeological sequence and the flint in particular for the levels dating from the Lower Magdalenian and the Upper Solutrean. The classification of the lithic pieces has been based on their external textural characters, for which we have used a reference collection. For the determination of flint, samples have been selected for study through a binocular loupe and thin films. The lithic raw materials collected in the immediate environment of the site are predominant, among which stand out the quartzite, the radiolarite and the so-called black chert. Also there are different types of flint, both from Asturias (Piloña, Piedramuelle) and from distant (Monte Picota, in Cantabria) and very distant supply sources (Flysch, in the Basque Country).