Pastores trashumantes del Neolítico antiguo en un entorno de alta montaña: secuencia crono-cultural de la Cova de Els Trocs (San Feliú de Veri, Huesca)

This paper presents the preliminary results of the excavation of the “Els Trocs” Cave, developed in the context of the research project “The pathways of the Neolithic”. The careful and detailed work of excavation and recording has revealed a complex stratigraphy in which, thanks to the radiocarbon dates on short-lived samples (cereal seeds, human bones and domestic animal remains), it has been possible to distinguish four different periods of occupation inside the cave. With this information and some preliminary analyses of part of the materials (pottery, flint and faunal remains), we have documented the presence of a human group in the mountain pastures of the axial Pyrennes, at a very early stage (beginning of the last third of the VIth millennium cal. BC), with a transhumant pastoral economy. It was a fully neolithic population with clear evidences of the use of wheat and barley, despite they did not cultivate around the close environment of this cave, where complex burial rituals had been also documented.