Herders and Pioneers: The Role of Pastoralism in the Neolithization of the Amblés Valley (Ávila, Central Iberia)

Abstract

In recent years, the notion of landscape learning has been the object of increasing attention when discussing the neolithization of Europe. The landscape learning model stresses the necessity of gathering environmental information about a previously unfamiliar region. Therefore, it is particularly relevant in cases where the beginning of a farming economy is better explained in relation to the movements of peoples (colonization), rather than to the adoption of crops and livestock by pre-existing hunters and gatherers (acculturation). Unlike other Iberian regions, where the adoption of agriculture runs parallel to that of animal husbandry, the available data on the neolithization process of the Sierra de Gredos mountain range seem to suggest that raising livestock may have preceded plant cultivation. Based on an interdisciplinary and multi-proxy approach, this paper explores the idea that the adoption of a food-producing economy in the Amblés Valley (Ávila, Central Iberia) may have been connected with pastoralism. In this context, landscape learning provides a model for analyzing how Early Neolithic herders in their seasonal movements were capable of wayfinding by memorizing spatial features that functioned as visual landmarks.