The last phases of life for European hunter-gatherers represent a topic of great research interest. During the early and middle Holocene, between 10,000 and 8,000 years ago, these populations underwent significant socio-economic changes, adapting to new environmental conditions and developing new forms of mobility and subsistence. Unfortunately, the encampments of such human groups are often difficult to identify, and our understanding of their lifestyles, especially for the later stages of the so-called Mesolithic era, is still limited. For this reason, in 2020, the University of Pisa, along with the Government of Aragon, began excavating an open-air encampment, dated through radiocarbon between 8200 and 7900 years ago, located in the Monegros region (Huesca, Spain), in the valley of the Ebro River. The site, discovered in the 1980s thanks to surface reconnaissance carried out by archaeologist Javier Rei Lanaspa, was at risk of being destroyed due to erosive and anthropic processes.
Three excavation campaigns have revealed a short-term encampment, situated on a rocky slope, with a flint-knapping area surrounded by various pit combustion structures and hearth areas. The recovered materials, in chipped flint from the nearby Alcubierre Sierra formations, consist of small cores, pressure-flaked to create blades and geometric points of triangular and trapezoidal shape, according to the standards of the so-called “Geometric Mesolithic,” which characterizes the final phase of life for hunter-gatherer groups before the arrival of the Neolithic and the first agro-pastoral populations from the East.