Surf and Turf: The Use of Marine and Terrestrial Resources in the Early Neolithic of Coastal Southern Portugal

Southern Portugal is an interesting case study in the spread of the Middle Eastern Neolithic complex. Similar to sites along the Mediterranean coast, the Portuguese Neolithic was the result of the longitudinal movement of agricultural adaptations. Plants and animals that originally evolved in southwest Asia, therefore, did not have to adapt to extreme changes in the length of the growing season, summer temperatures, or rainfall, as was the case with the latitudinal movement of agriculture into interior and northern Europe. Unlike their contemporaries along the Mediterranean, however, the Mesolithic and Neolithic inhabitants of Portugal had access to the rich marine resources of the Atlantic Ocean upwelling along the western coast of Europe allowed extensive exploitation of fish and shellfish by relatively complex and sedentary groups of foragers throughout the late Pleistocene and early Holocene, from Portugal to Scandinavia (Arias 1999). The large concheiros (shell midden sites) of Mesolithic Portugal are just one example of this phenomenon (Zilhão 1997).