Molluscs as Personal Adornment in a Gravettian Context from Cueva de Ardales (Málaga, Spain)

Abstract

Molluscs used as personal adornment in Gravettian context are scarce in the Iberian Peninsula. Less than 200 pieces have been barely found along the Mediterranean, and most of them in coastal sites. This article presents thirteen new items–in the majority of marine origin–found by a Spanish-German team during a joint research project in Cueva de Ardales (Ardales, Malaga, Spain). The cave is one of the few interior sites in which this type of finds has been attested and therefore shows the connections of the coast with the hinterland (away from the current Mediterranean coastline about 50 km currently and 60–65 kms. around 30 ka). The article also presents archaeozoological and archaeometric analysis of the molluscs, especially Raman spectrometry and X-ray diffraction.