Vasco-Cantabria, in archaeology and the environmental sciences, is an area on the northern coast of Spain. It covers similar areas to the northern parts of the adjacent modern regions of the Basque country and Cantabria.[1] In geology the "Vasco-Cantabrian Basin" or "Basque-Cantabrian Basin" covers the area and the seas off the coast in the Bay of Biscay, an area between the Iberian and European tectonic plates.
The area is of special significance in the archaeology of the Upper Palaeolithic, Epipalaeolithic and Mesolithic periods of the Stone Age. A narrow coastal strip was a glacial refugium, never covered by glaciers during the Last Glacial Maximum, and appears to have been densely populated.[2] It is part of the wider Franco-Cantabrian region (also Franco-Cantabric region) that stretches from Asturias, the next region west of Cantabria, to Provence in southeastern France.
The main archaeological industries in the area during this period are the Middle Paleolithic Mousterian, the Upper Paleolithic Chatelperronian, Aurignacian, Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian, and then the Azilian,[3] which is variously classified as Late Paleolithic, Epipalaeolithic and Mesolithic. Vasco-Cantabrian sites contain much of the surviving art of the Upper Paleolithic, especially in terms of cave paintings. The UNESCO World Heritage Site "Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain" consists of ten caves in Cantabria and three in the Basque County, as well as five from Asturias.[4]
- ^ Straus (2013), Map on p. 100
- ^ Straus (2013), 97-107
- ^ Straus (1996), Table 2, p.87
- ^ UNESCO, full list of sites in the "Cave of Altamira and Paleolithic Cave Art of Northern Spain" WHS