The Solutrean Antlerworking in Hort de Cortés–Volcán del Faro (Valencia, Spain) in the Southwest Europe Context: a Preliminary Study

In this work, we present a preliminary analysis of the Solutrean antlerworking at Hort de Cortés–Volcán del Faro (Valencia, Spain) (ca. 26–21 ka cal BP). A restudy of its archaeological sequence, which came to encompass the Early Upper Palaeolithic to the Magdalenian period, has been a mandatory subject in the last years. This site became an archaeological reference since the beginning of its excavation in the 1960s but has not been systematically studied. The implementation of more specialized studies is used a) to observe the distribution of technical pieces in the stratigraphy and identify possible stratigraphic alterations and b) to restudy a huge lithic, osseous, and faunal collection which can provide new information that may clarify them. The aim is to develop a systematic study, from a technological point of view, to identify and characterize operational schemes and to define the modalities of antlerworking. The technological analysis of waste products, blanks, roughouts, and objects allows us to observe how raw material is obtained and transformed into a toolkit following the refitting by default method. It will help us analyze some questions about the raw material acquisition and transformation like (1) selection between hunted and shed antlers and its possible explanation, (2) the existence of planning of tool manufacture, and (3) the step-by-step production of the debitage. We will extract conclusions and analyze different social aspects: (1) by identifying technical traditions and comparing them with other studied sites and periods and (2) by knowing a new aspect of the way of life of these human groups.