Sara Díaz Bonilla

Autonomous University of Barcelona | UAB · Departamento de Prehistoria

During the last two decades, the archaeological research carried out in the Pyrenees challenged the traditional images of the past in this mountain area. The archaeological sequence of the range goes back and sites like Balma Margineda, treated until recently as an exception, now are seen as part of more global process. Actual data suggest that mai...

En el presente artículo se realiza un repaso conceptual sobre qué se entiende por experimentación, su trayectoria y qué implicaciones ha tenido para la arqueología y el estudio de artefactos prehistóricos. La cerámica ha sido un ámbito donde la experimentación ha irrumpido con fuerza, dado su potencial a la hora de formular hipótesis y contrastarla...

En este artículo presentamos los instrumentos de trabajo relacionados con la producción cerámica. El punto de partida es una serie de programas experimentales que nos permiten definir la aparición y el desarrollo de los rastros de uso en las superficies de los distintos instrumentos relacionados con esa producción, una vez reconocidos arqueológicam...

The surface treatment of handmade pottery is often described in ceramological studies of prehistoric collections. However, beyond inferences about its meaning, few works have addressed this issue in depth. For this study, an experimental program has been carried out, where the main variable being explored was the category of tool involved in the fa...

Although new to our discipline, the archaeology of high mountain areas is steadily growing, generating empirical studies and procedures that often define it. Aside from the diversity of research teams and programs, certain aspects tend to recur. One is a certain interest in long term sequences. Another is a wide spatial perspective, extending far b...

Research on the Neolithic has until recently considered the Pyrenees as a secondary player in the process of introducing agricultural and livestock life forms as opposed to the pre- and coastal mountain ranges and the central depression. The work carried out in recent years in these territories, with a review of old collections, preventive excavati...

Archaeological research in the National Park has documented an archaeological sequence of human presence in this area of high Pyrenean mountains that covers the entire Holocene. Its earliest phases were characterized by hunter-gatherer populations with a marked mobility that occupied small rock shelters as a refuge during hunting expeditions. Durin...

Research on the Neolithic has until recently considered the Pyrenees as a secondary player in the process of introducing agricultural and livestock life forms as opposed to the pre- and coastal mountain ranges and the central depression. The work carried out in recent years in these territories, with a review of old collections, preventive excavati...

After years of intense fieldwork, our knowledge about the Neolithisation of the Pyrenees has considerably increased. In the southern central Pyrenees, some previously unknown Neolithic sites have been discovered at subalpine and alpine altitudes (1,000–1,500 m a.s.l.). One of them is Cueva Lóbrica, 1,170 m a.s.l., which has an occupation phase with...

For the last twenty years, various interdisciplinary research programs have been studying human presence in high mountain environments and how the different activities carried out there have impacted on the landscape and transformed it since the Early Holocene. Grazing, hunting, mining, and charcoal-making are the most significant outdoor productiv...

In recent years, new archaeological research has highlighted relatively early neolithisation in different areas of the axial Pyrenees. Sites like Coro Trasito, Cueva Lóbrica, Els Trocs and Cova del Sardo show a consolidated presence of human communities with farming and animal husbandry and a fully Neolithic material culture at the end of the sixth...

This volume contains a collection of research aimed towards understanding prehistoric subsistence change with the use of new computational modeling techniques. There is a sort of poetic irony when using humanity’s newest technology to study early human history. The distance between past and future almost appears highlighted when using a tablet to r...

The excavation of the Las Obagues de Ratera Rockshelter, above 2300 m of altitude, has allowed to document a large archaeological sequence. An intense radiocarbon dating defines the chronology of these occupations, which from the beginning of the Holocene and until the XXth century, covering different prehistoric and historic periods. The analysis...

Among the 350 archaeological sites discovered in the National Park there are several rockshelters. Those litlle cavities are formed by glacial erratics. Between 2015 and 2017 one of them, the Abric de les Obagues de Ratera was completely excavated. Excavation Works have highlighted a long sequence of human occupation, over about 10 thousand years....

Correspondence analysis including geometric tools primary types of Meso/Neolithic sites of the north-east of the Iberian Peninsula Views from Above The Neolithization of the Southern Central Pyrenees and the Obagues de Ratera Rock Shelter. The Lithic Assemblages from Phase 12 is the most abundant of the entire occupation sequence (254 specimens). 5...

Thanks to the research developed in the Parc Nacional d’Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici (PNAESM) by the GAAM group (Grup d’Arqueologia d’Alta Muntanya) since the early 2000, more than 350 sites of archaeological interest have been documented. Most of them are related to grazing activity and, although its intensity must have changed through ti...

For many millennia, fire has been the source to provide heat and light to our home and so, gathering firewood might have been important for human societies, in particular, for those living in colder places like high mountain environments. Archaeological and paleoenvironmental studies on both sides of the Pyrenees have provided a large dataset conf...

Extended diggings in cave’s area are showing occupations from Neolithic (VI and V Millennium calBC) and Bronze Age (middle of II Millennium calBC). About that, especially in the former, human settlement has to do with their use like a fold cave. We could see this fact in the “fumier” layers. Nevertheless, the presence of storage silos shows the pre...

Research carried out in the last 20 years in both sides of the Pyrenees has demonstrated the existence of an important archaeological heritage in the high zones of the mountain chain. These vestiges are frequently located above 2.000 m of altitude, in zones that were linked to cattle activities in past centuries. Typically, they are the remains of...

This book aims to provide case studies and a general view of the main processes involved in the ecosystem shifts occurring in the high mountains, and to analyse the implications for nature conservation. Although case studies from the Pyrenees are preponderant, conclusions are aimed at any mountain range surrounded by highly populated lowland areas....