Session: #709

Session, made up of a combination of papers, max. 15 minutes each

Since the dawn of humanity, the importance of specific raw materials has led to their search in regions which are not easy to access. The case of specific rocks or stones, widely used as raw material and ubiquitous in most sites, is a case point. Yet many other materials (minerals, pigments or even wood) were also sourced and exploited in these areas.
The development of archaeometry during the last decades has significantly increased our knowledge of not only the potential sources but also of the scope of their movement or distribution either by the same human groups that exploited them or as part of trade networks. Additionally, the recent advances on the landscape archaeology of mountain regions show that, far from acting as a natural border, they were a place of contacts and transit between the human societies inhabiting on their sides or even the nearby lowlands.
The goal is to set up a debate about human behaviour and the relationships with the environment regarding raw material procurement, from a broad and diachronic point of view. We will address:
• the analytical methods to characterize/identify these materials
• the study of the sites/outcrops from a comprehensive perspective
• the dynamics between the sourcing of these resources, the strategies to exploit them, the supply mechanisms and connections/commerce networks,
• how the natural landscape shaped the cultural one
• the changes/continuities derived from the exploitation of these areas through time, by comparing case studies from different mountain regions.

Natrual resources, archaeometry, landscape, movility/distribution

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Anna Gutierrez Garcia-M. (Spain) ^1,2

Marta Sánchez De la Torre (France) ³