Among the major European concentrations of Mesolithic settlements, the lower Sado valley is one of the least known. Despite the development of large systematic excavations in the mid twentieth century and recent attempts to re-examine some sites, only very partial information is available. Yet there are valuable unpublished archaeological collections in the National Museum of Archaeology in Lisbon, and the preservation of most of the sites is quite satisfactory. Moreover, the Sado shell middens are located in a very particular geographical setting, which opens up very interesting questions on the role of coastal and inland resources and landscapes among late hunter-gatherers. Since 2010, a Luso-Spanish interdisciplinary team has been systematically re-appraising this area within the framework of a research project on the transition to the Neolithic in coastal areas of SW Atlantic Europe. The project design and the preliminary results of the first fieldwork seasons are presented in this paper.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio
