Lithic raw material conveyance and hunter-gatherer mobility during the Lower Magdalenian in Cantabria, Spain

Hunter-gatherer groups' organizational strategies were influenced by how key resources were structured on landscapes, including lithic toolstones with fixed outcrop locations. Lithic artifacts, which were created via reductive sequences, can inform landscape-level behavioral reconstructions because toolstone decreased in quantity through use as it was transported further from its source and its reduction stages can be determined using diagnostic lithic debris (e.g. primary cortical pieces, renewal flakes, and cores). By comparing lithic raw materials and their reduction stages at four Lower Cantabrian Magdalenian sites-Altamira, El Juyo, El Mirón, and El Rascaño-this paper reconstructs lithic provisioning and hunter-gatherer mobility in the center of the Vasco-Cantabrian region during the Last Glacial period. This study proposes that the Lower Magdalenian groups who occupied these sites shared a regional economic territory that extended from Cantabria into western Navarra and conveyed toolstones between sites as part of mobile toolkits. Local raw material conveyance demonstrates that shifting environmental zones was an important factor in these hunter-gatherers' mobility strategies in Cantabria.