MESO2025 - Session 8. Mobility and communication

Coordinated by Dorothée Drucker and María Natividad Fuertes-Prieto

Abstract

Mobility and communication patterns during the Mesolithic are recurrent topics of study that capture subsistence movements, territorial exploitation, and the exchange of ideas and cultural materials among Early Holocene hunter-gathererfishers. From the origin of raw material and prey to debitage techniques, ornamental distributions, and group sharing, different lenses of analysis are required to build models of mobility, territoriality, and social networks. By mobility, we refer not only to movements of artefacts but also to individuals or groups who may be motivated by economic and/or social factors. With communication, we seek to provide insights into the social relationship driving raw material and worked object exchanges, economic and cultural practices, and genetic interactions. Our goal is to decipher strategies of occupation, as well as links among different cultural groups and territories. Among other topics, we would examine to what extent patterns of mobility and communications may have been resilient to short- and long-term climatic changes (e.g. the 8.2 ka event).

Combining approaches as diverse as lithic raw material provenance, the management of chaînes opératoires, the origin and making of ornaments, subsistence seasonality, and genetic relationships will allow us to gain new and diverse perspectives on movements and exchanges. We invite submissions from researchers with any focus, including lithic/organic raw material, lithic/bone industry, ornaments, zooarchaeology, proteomics, stable isotopes, and paleogenetics. Thematic studies focusing on specific geographical regions or diachronic perspectives are especially welcome. Studies based primarily on one line of evidence should be contextualised in a large chronological and/or temporal context. In bringing together different methods and materials, we aim to gain novel perspectives on mobility and communications during the different  phases of the Mesolithic and the transitions with the Final Paleolithic and Early Neolithic.