and winters further inland (Arnaud 1989). The role of plant foods is difficult to determine; Arnaud (1989) stressed the potential importance of acorns and pine nuts, both available locally. Unusually for the European Mesolithic, the middens contain grindstones, which could have been used to prepare plant foods. Stable-isotope analysis indicates that Mesolithic populations had more marine foods in their diets than did Neolithic populations, but the break between the two is less abrupt in Iberia than in Denmark (Lubell and Jackes 1988).

The Asturian culture of the northern Spanish coasts has been relatively thoroughly researched (see, e.g., G.A. Clark 1983a; González Morales 1989). Many of the sites are shell middens with limpets as the main component, and some of these are found in caves—a major example being La Riera, where the Asturian midden overlies substantial Paleolithic deposits (Straus and Clark 1986). Among the animal bones those of the red deer predominate (G. A. Clark and Yi 1983). Less is understood of seasonality and settlement patterns in this area. It has been suggested that the Asturian sites may be seasonally complementary to Azilian sites inland, at least during the relatively short period of chronological overlap between the two—but longer-term coast-inland complementarity was likely (G. A. Clark 1983b, 1989).

Other areas of Iberia have received less scrutiny. One particular problem in this connection is the possible appearance of domestic sheep and/or goats and pigs in Mesolithic sites in eastern and southern Spain (Boessneck and von den Driesch 1980; Bernabeu, Aura, and Badal 1993; Ribé, Cruells, and Molist 1997; Zilhão 1993). The appearance of the bones of sheep, goats, and pigs in the data have recently come under criticism from two directions. First, the stratigraphic problems in the caves in question may have been underestimated, with the relevent bones ascribed to the wrong layers (Zilhão 1993); second, the distinction between wild and domestic pigs is problematic and may have been too rigidly applied (Rowley-Conwy 1995a). There are currently no compelling reasons to assume that domestic livestock were present in the Mesolithic of southeastern Spain.

Norway

The sheer size of the Scandinavian peninsula is not always appreciated: the distance from Copenhagen to the most northern cape of Norway equals the distance from Copenhagen to Naples, and most of this span is Norway, which extends to beyond 71° north latitude. In addition, the coastline is deeply indented, giving Norway a total coastal length of over 26,000 kilometers. Much of the country’s terrain is steep and difficult, and organic materials usually do not survive in Norway’s climate. Given such difficulties, it is a testimony to Norwegian colleagues that so much is known of the Norwegian Mesolithic period, one of the most interesting in Europe.

The central parts of the country are less well researched than the Arctic or southern parts (for a good review, see Nygaard 1989). A consensus is growing that agriculture did not appear at the start of the artifactual Neolithic. The first evidence in southeastern Norway may date to the middle Neolithic (mid-fifth millennium b.p.). Elsewhere it occurred substantially later: in southwestern Norway there is no agricultural evidence until the late Neolithic (Bjørgo, Kristoffersen, and Prescott 1992; Prescott 1991), and near the Arctic Circle stratigraphically early cereal grains from Stiurhelleren have been directly dated to as late as around 3200 b.p. (Johansen 1990). For more recent reviews, see Prescott (1996) and Peter Rowley-Conwy (1995b).

Early-Mesolithic groups are known as the Fosna culture in southern Norway and the Komsa culture in the Arctic (Nygaard 1989). Organic material is rare, and later periods are better known. In the south there was extensive late-Mesolithic/early-Neolithic hunter-gatherer settlement in the deeply dissected coastal zone (see, e.g., Mikkelsen 1978; Bang-Andersen 1996). The major settlement of Kotedalen lay on a strait rich in fish and was probably occupied all year (A. B. Olsen 1992). The large faunal sample showed a strongly marine orientation, dominated by fish (primarily from the cod family). The most common mammals were seals and otters, followed by red deer and pigs (Hufthammer 1992). Farther inland, in the inner fjord zone, remains at the cave site of Skipshelleren