MESO2025 - Session 12. Current research and Mesolithic narratives

Coordinated by Colas Guéret and Adriana Soto Sebastián

Abstract

Beyond their definition of hunter-gatherer-fisher societies, Mesolithic communities constituted diverse and complex realities. The research carried out on those populations reveals: the development and adoption of different strategies of exploitation and relationship with the environment, along with different ways of mobility and territoriality; the exploration of new spaces; the dynamism of their contact and exchange networks; the construction of different identities; their technological, artistic and symbolic practices; and their social and spatial organisation, among many other issues. These heterogeneous and dynamic realities can only be tackled successfully from a plurality of perspectives, approaches, methodologies, and interpretations.

This session aims to include all those proposals that do not fit in the topics addressed in the other sessions, but which reflect the diversity of narratives and perspectives that encompass Mesolithic research. In this sense, the following issues will be welcomed: presentations of projects or new lines of research, with innovative thematic, methodological, and/or theoretical approaches; results of fieldwork and discoveries; analysis of materials and archaeological contexts; collaborative projects (collaborative databases, networks, etc.); and dissemination and social valorisation activities about Mesolithic research, as well as its impact on current societies. In short, all those efforts that constitute and build from plural and diverse perspectives our  knowledge about Mesolithic societies.