La organización del aprendizaje en la mina de sílex del Neolítico antiguo de Casa Montero (Madrid)

Abstract

The Casa Montero flint mine, to date the oldest in the western Mediterranean, has provided an exceptional set of information to understand the Early Neolithic technical system of lithic production in central Iberia. The system consists of a complex network of seven harmoniously combined operating sequences. This technological knowledge was a fundamental part of the social capital of the first agrarian communities, critical for social reproduction itself and, as such, necessarily transmitted through generations. In this paper we describe the technical system, emphasizing how the on-site relationship between the production of tools and apprenticeship was organized encouraging the motivation of apprentices and avoiding competition for a paradoxically scarce high quality flint.