Maite Arilla Osuna

During the Middle Paleolithic period, carnivores and hominids periodically occupied the same areas
at different times and each predator generated significant palimpsests, rendering difficult their archaeological interpretation.
Teixoneres Cave, a carnivore den site, located in the northeastern part of the Iberian Peninsula, demonstrates that it is
possible to overcome these problems by using a careful strategy in selecting samples for radiocarbon dating, in order to
produce an accurate chronology of the site in question and certainly attest the human occupation.

The debate over hominidecarnivore interactions during the Pleistocene has been mainly approached from
a human perspective, with the aim of contributing to the knowledge of the evolution of human cultural
capabilities in the different periods. Regarding the European Middle Palaeolithic, it is most commonly
concluded that Neanderthals were clearly superior to carnivores in the context of competitive relationships,
with respect to both prey and the occupied space. Therefore, the presence of some human groups in
the environments usually inhabited by carnivores could be perceived, from an ecological point of view, as a
disturbance in the balance of the ecosystems. In order to assess the ecological impact of these human
groups, the present study analyses the Unit III of Teixoneres Cave (MIS 3;Moi
a, Barcelona, Spain) through a
comparison of palaeoecological and archaeological data. The site is located in the highlands between the
twomain rivers connecting the central region of Catalonia with the Mediterranean coast: the Llobregat and
the Ter. Palynological and paleontological data indicate a cold landscape dominated by woodlands and
some wet meadows. The high vertebrate diversity recorded in this stratigraphic unit suggests an environment
marked by a balanced predatoreprey dynamic, which may have been interrupted by the occasional
presence of small human groups. According to the archaeological data, these human groups tended
to predate the same prey as did carnivores, which may have generated a certain perturbation in the system.
However, the small size of the groups and the brevity of their visits to Teixoneres Cave seem to have
minimised the perturbation, allowing the environment to recover its original balance.

The fat- and nutrient-rich marrow of animal bones can be extracted using different techniques.
Passive hammerstone percussion has been the primary focus of experimental bone breaking
and the main analogy to understand archaeological bone breakage. Here, the term ‘passive’
is applied because the bone to be broken passively receives the impact from a hammerstone.
In addition to this technique, there is another bone-breaking method that also requires direct
percussion, but in an active way. This method is percussion by ‘batting’, in which the bone is
actively hit against an anvil until the bone breaks. This technique has rarely been considered
at an experimental level and, therefore, has been omitted in the majority of the archaeological
interpretations of faunal assemblages with pre-use of fire technologies. In this study, we
attempt to analytically characterize this type of bone-breaking technique through a systematic
comparison with hammerstone percussion. The applied statistical tests will allow us to
distinguish some diagnostic modifications, such as the outlines of the fracture planes and the
type of notches or their location with respect to the longitudinal axis of the bone. These
features and their proportions allow the consideration of the use of this technique in Pleistocene
anthropogenic faunal assemblages.

The article presents the finds from a cave in the Pre-Pyrenees
of Lleida province with two distinct chronological horizons: one
Late Neolithic-Chalcolithic and the other Roman. It analyses different hypotheses on the Late Roman cave habitat and places the complex in its overall historical period.