Project Gallery Flint quarrying in north-eastern Iberia: quarry sites and the initial transformation of raw material Xavier Terradas & David Ortega * Introduction Prehistoric communities carried out quarrying activities to obtain raw materials for tool production. These were produced either directly for immediate or later use by the same groups who quarried the stone, or indirectly by distributing the raw material or partially or completely manufactured products to third parties. All these procedures could be performed within a temporal and spatial sequence of variable extent, giving rise to archaeological evidence of very different types (Nelson 1991; Ingold 2012). Archaeological sites related to stone quarrying have not always received the scientific attention they deserve, probably due to poor preservation and the difficulty in their identification. It was not until the Neolithic period (c. fifth millennium BC) that the increased demand for flint for the production of blades and axes intensified the quarrying activities that left identifiable traces in the landscape (Figure 1) (Binder & Perlès 1990). Quarry sites and the initial transformation of lithic raw material Quarrying activities took place on the rock outcrops, resulting in anthropic modification of their natural arrangement, as well as introducing non-local elements to the site in the form of mining tools (Figure 2). The more intensive and recurrent these quarrying activities were, the more evident their effects, thus enabling their archaeological identification. Particular archaeological features were formed, linked to the extraction of the raw material and its initial transformation (Ericson & Purdy 1984). Studying these archaeological deposits can provide important data about fundamental aspects of the first stages in the production processes, as their design is indicative of planning in the community’s production system. These involve the following (Terradas 2001):  The initial phases in the lithic tools manufacturing sequence, in which the raw material was shaped for the production of tool blanks and its transportation to other sites. * Spanish National Research Council (CSIC—IMF), Archaeology of Social Dynamics, Carrer de les Egipcíaques 15, 08001 Barcelona, Spain Author for correspondence (Email: terradas@imf.csic.es) © Antiquity Publications Ltd, 2017 antiquity 91 359, e5 (2017): 1–6 doi:10.15184/aqy.2017.167 1 available at https://www.cambridge.org/core/terms. https://doi.org/10.15184/aqy.2017.167 Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core. IP address: 168.151.127.31, on 24 Sep 2017 at 15:03:05, subject to the Cambridge Core terms of use,