New preliminary data on the exploitation of plants in Mesolithic shell middens: the evidence from plant macro-remains from the Sado Valley (Pocas de S. Bento and Cabeco do Pez).

Abstract

Within the framework of the Sado Meso project, two shell middens(Poças de S. Bento and Cabeço do Pez) in the Sado valley, Portugal, havebeen exhaustively sampled for plant macro-remains, in an effort to overcome two problems in prehistoric research: firstly, the scarcity of direct data about plant use by the Mesolithic peoples of Atlantic Iberia, and secondly, the neglect of sampling strategies for the recovery of plantmacro-remains in the shell midden research tradition. The flotationtechnique has been applied to 100% of the sediment obtained during the new excavation campaigns and a considerable number of samples havebeen studied. We now have substantial data about the exploitation of awide range of wild plants which might have played a role of economic importance within the human groups at the end of the Mesolithic.