ABSTRACT
Archaeobotanical studies of the Basque region and the Atlantic Façade of Spain have traditionally focused on pollen studies and charcoal analysis intended for environmental reconstruction, vegetation and climatic change. Little serious study has been undertaken in order to determine the role that plant resources played in the economy and subsistence strategies of hunter-gatherers. From an initial period when plant foods were virtually ignored and interpretation was completely meat-biased, we passed to a second where - under the influence of Clarke’s work (1978) - the importance of plants was reassessed (Barandiarán 1983) based on modelling, rather than actual finds. However, it is still commonly felt that plant foods are not preserved in archaeological contexts from hunter-gatherer sites. Recent investigations in the eastern Pyrenees (Marinval 1988, 1995; Geddes et al. 1989; Holden et al. 1995) and other areas of the Old World (Mason et al. 1994) have demonstrated that plant material is preserved in such contexts. In this chapter, a synthetic approach to the study of pre-agrarian human economy and subsistence is adopted, incorporating the analysis of plant remains of several kinds with other data, such as chemical analysis of human bones. We will focus on pre-Neolithic plant use at the Pyrenean site of Aizpea in Navarre, and will attempt to answer four main questions: (a) what was the vegetal landscape like in the area during the Late Mesolithic? (b) how did the Mesolithic occupants of Aizpea use fuelwood? (c) how diverse was the range of plants exploited for food? and (d) how important was this component in human diet?
