Research compendium for "Early Mesolithic technological variability in eastern Iberia: expedient technologies and microlithic artefacts from El Arenal de la Virgen (Alicante, Spain). "

Research compendium for "Early Mesolithic technological variability in eastern Iberia: expedient technologies and microlithic artefacts from El Arenal de la Virgen (Alicante, Spain). " Corresponding author: [e-mail] Abstract This paper presents a detailed technological and typological analysis of the lithic assemblages from the open-air site of El Arenal de la Virgen (Villena, eastern Iberia), attributed to the Notched and Denticulated Mesolithic (NDM). The assemblage documents a markedly expedient technological context, characterized by flake-based production, low standardization and limited typological variability, while also revealing a set of hyper-microlithic artefacts likely used as armatures. Dated to the mid-to-late 9th millennium cal BP, this evidence provides new insights into the later development of the NDM and its relationship with the emergence of the Geometric Mesolithic (GM). The technological and morphometric characteristics of these microlithic elements differ from those of standardized GM armatures, suggesting the coexistence of alternative technical solutions within late NDM contexts. This case contributes new empirical data to ongoing discussions on the tempo, mechanisms and social context of technological change during the Early Holocene in the Iberian Mediterranean. Keywords Microliths, technological variability, expedient technologies, Notched and Denticulated Mesolithic, Iberian Peninsula Contents Paper_AV_Lithic.zip: R project directory. ∟data: folder containing the datasets. AV_Lithics_data.xlsx: main dataset of the morpho-technical and typological analysis. Dates_Fig_11c: dataset of radiocarbon dates used for Figure 11c. ∟output: folder to store the outputs (figures, spreadsheets). ∟scripts: folder containing the scripts AV_Lithics_code.R: R code with the statistics and graphs used in the paper and the supplementary information document. Fig_11c_code: code for producing the SPDs of Figure 11c. Funding J.R.R. has been supported by a Juan de la Cierva postdoctoral fellowship (JDC2022-050014-I) funded by the MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 and the European Union-Next Generation EU/PRTR. This work was developed within the PALEODEM project, funded by the European Research Council under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program (ref. ERC-CoG 2015-683018), granted to JFLdP. JFLdP has additionally been supported by the Plan Gen-T program (ref. CIDEGENT-18/040) from the Generalitat Valenciana.