Jasper procurement and lithic production during the Early Neolithic in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula. The site of Caserna de Sant Pau del Camp (Barcelona)

The neolithic site of Caserna de Sant Pau is located in the city center of Barcelona. It was excavated during the 1989-1991 period and it has been recently reviewed and studied. This initiative has permitted a detailed study of the chipped stone assemblage, which is mostly composed of jasper chipped remains. Our study of the jasper assemblage shows how important the exploitation of this raw material was for the first neolithic communities who settled along the Barcelona plain, from the second half of the 6th millennium cal. B.C. Provenance studies lead us to propose that jasper was procured from the nearby mountain of Montjui'c. Furthermore, the techno typological study of the assemblage allows characterizing the knapping methods and techniques, emphasizing the use of heat treatment and pressure knapping. Beside that, contextualization of our data within the wider neolithic frame of the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula gives us the possibility to propose a first attempt to model jasper exploitation and distribution throughout the Neolithic in the northeast of the Iberian Peninsula.