Neanderthals, especially those inhabiting areas to the north of the Iberia peninsula, relied primarily on flint for their tools. Paul Mellars noted a strong "coincidence between raw material distributions and the occurrence of the richer and more intensively occupied open-air sites" in southwestern France. In Spain, flint nodules only occurred in the area of Cap Salou on the Catalonian coast.
When flint wasn’t available, tool makers substituted chert, a similar silica rock. Its primary location in Spain was the Jurassic layers in the Sistema Ibérico.
Perhaps because flint wasn’t as widely distributed as the animals they hunted, early Neanderthal tool makers developed techniques that produced more flakes from a nodule than previous methods. Once formed, Jean-Pierre Bocquet-Appel and Alain Tuffreau said, Mousterian technology didn’t change.
Southern Neanderthals who sought refuge in southeastern Spain during the cold spell 50,000 years ago still used flint for sidescrapers and points, but were forced to adapt quartz for their other tools. Their diet also expanded to include local species. They left behind marine mollusk shells and rabbit and tortoise bones along with those of horses, deer, and ibex.
La Cueva de los Aviones was less than five miles from the Mediterranean. João Zilhão’s team found the local Neanderthals not only ate local varieties of cockles, mussels, and limpets, but also some that weren’t local. They believed they must have wrapped the dog whelks in algae to prevent them from spoiling on the journey back to the cave.
The archaeologists noticed that some of the shells they found were from inedible species. Many had holes from 4.5 mm to 6.5 mm in diameter. While nature and weather could have produced holes, they believed these specific clam shells were selected because they could be strung into ornaments.
Glycymeris nummaria shells are nearly circular with a diameter that can reach 2.4 inches across. According to Wikipedia, they’re marked by radiating, concentric lines. The exterior is dull, usually a dark or pale brown. The inside is " glossy, white or pale yellow, often with irregular brown markings."
Hematite residues were found on one of the clam shells. Researchers found the nearest source for the iron oxide was two or three miles away in the modern mining district of La Unión.
More interesting than the ornamental clam shell was a spiny oyster shell that had contained "a red lepidocrocite base mixed with ground particles of charcoal, dolomite, hematite, and pyrite." Zilhão’s group thought it was either used for mixing or storing pigments.
The existence of a container implies the development of one of the necessary concepts that allowed individuals to move beyond being dependent on what was found each day to storing food for later use and for boiling it.
Notes:
Bocquet-Appel, Jean-Pierre and Alain Tuffreau (April–June 2009). "Technological Responses of Neanderthals to Macroclimatic Variations (240,000-40,000 BP)," Human Biology 81:287-307:2009.
Gibbons, Wes and Teresa Moreno. The Geology of Spain, 2002; on locations of flint.
Gómez, J. J. and S. R. Fernández-López. "The Iberian Middle Jurassic Carbonate-Platform System: Synthesis of the Palaeogeographic Elements of Its Eastern Margin (Spain)," Palaeogeography, Palaeoclimatology, Palaeoecology 236:190-205:2006; on locations of chert.
Mellars, Paul. The Neanderthal Legacy, 1996.
Wikipedia, on the mollusk species.
Zilhão, João, et alia. "Symbolic Use of Marine Shells and Mineral Pigments by Iberian Neandertals," National Academy of Sciences, Proceedings 107:1023-1028:2010.
The edible local species were:
Cerastoderma - common cockle
Monodonta - sea snail
Mytilus - saltwater mussel
Patella - limpet
The non-local edible species were:
Nassarius incrassatus - thick-lipped dogwhelk
Gibbula - small sea snail
The ornamental species was:
Glycymeris insubrica/nummaria - bittersweet clam
The utilitarian species was:
Spondylus gaederopus - European spiny oyster
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