El hueso frontal de équido grabado con una representación de este mismo animal procedente de la C... more El hueso frontal de équido grabado con una representación de este mismo animal procedente de la Cueva de Hornos de la Peña (Cantabria), se recuperó a principios del pasado siglo XX en las excavaciones de H. Breuil, H. Obermaier y H. Alcalde del Río. A pesar de la atribución auriñaciense de sus excavadores, las diferentes publicaciones posteriores en que la pieza ha sido objeto de análisis, han mantenido siempre la duda de su pertenencia a este tecnocomplejo. A ello ha contribuido el hecho de que la estratigrafía de Hornos de la Peña no ha podido ser hasta el presente estudiada en profundidad, como también, muy probablemente, el carácter naturalista de su representación que parece alejarlo de los presupuestos artísticos del Paleolítico Superior inicial cantábrico. En este trabajo presentamos una serie de datos sobre la estratigrafía del yacimiento, obtenidos de diversos documentos inéditos conservados en el archivo del Museo Arqueológico Nacional de Madrid que, a nuestro juicio, corroboran la pertenencia de esta pieza de arte mueble al Auriñaciense.
he current issue has for origins a session of the scientific commission ‘Upper Palaeolithic of Eu... more he current issue has for origins a session of the scientific commission ‘Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia” organized by the present authors for the September 2014 worldwide Congress of the International Union for the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), held in Burgos, Spain. The first papers to reflect an interest in reconstructing the behaviour and social organisation of hunter-gatherers stem from the 1950s. These included studies of dwelling structures in open-air sites of the Russian Plain (P. Efmienko, S. Zamiatnine, I. Chovkoplass), and studies by North American researchers on the organisation of settlements, e.g., in the Virú Valley in Peru. It was A. Leroi Gourhan, however, who worked on reindeer cave in Arcy sur Cure and the Magdalenian camp-site of Pincevent in the 1960s and 1970s who really woke up Western European researchers with regard to this new focus of investigation into the Palaeolithic. He developed a new method of field work that would allow spatial relationships to be established between pieces of the archaeological record that reflect different phases of occupation - techniques that would be used over the above-mentioned decades in Dolni Vestonice, Pavlov and Milovice, Moravia, in Gönnersdorf, Germany, in Krakow-Spadzista, Poland, then later in certain sites in France, such as La Vigne-Brun in the Loire upper valley or Fontgrasse in eastern Languedoc and those of the Paris Basin (Etiolles, Marsangy, Verberie). The new perspectives that this approach afforded, supported by ethnographic parallels, facilitated the study of occupied areas and the activities undertaken by Upper Palaeolithic societies. The integration of the information provided by a landscape analysis with the archaeological record of the site, provides a more global view of the different models of land-use managed by hunter-gatherer groups, and is able to reveal mobility over sometimes very long distances. It also allows an understanding of how these groups organised their intrasite and intersite settlements, and provides a means of better characterising their functions and activities, and their adaptations to the environment, the landscape and the climate. This in turn allows advances to be made in terms of reconstructing the social and economic activities, and behaviour, of the different groups that occupied Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic. Given the chronological diversity represented in the articles of this issue, the decision was taken to organise them geographically, from Eastern to Western Europe. The first two articles thus deal with the Ukraine, where rich archaeological records have provided valuable information on the social and economic structures of human groups in Eastern Europe. Starting with excavations in Gontsy and the review of data from other contemporaneous sites on the great plain of Eastern Europe (Mezine, Mejiriche, Dobranichivka, etc.), L. Iakovleva investigates the social system of Mezinian hunters between 15,000 and 14,000 BP. These people, who organised themselves into rather large groups, spent much of the year living in spacious mammoth bone huts (residential settlements). The presence of smaller, seasonal sites, with no mammoth bone-based structures and containing non-local raw materials, reflects mobility across distances of sometimes over 600 km. Via archaeozoological analyses, L. Demay (and al.) studies the strategy of exploiting hunting resources at different sites on the Russian Plain (in the Dniester and Desna Valleys) during the Last Glacial Maximum (23,000-20,000 BP). These camps, characterised by a lithic industry based on local flint, were focused on hunting and butchering the mammoth. This large mammal was used as food, in the manufacture of tools, and to produce supports on which to undertake works of art. Other hunted animals included the reindeer and the horse; even certain carnivores appreciated for their fur were hunted, such as the fox. The relationship between material culture and ecology is also considered in this issue. F. Djindjian discusses the different material cultures of the Last Glacial Maximum in Europe as adaptive responses by human groups to climate change, responses with the aim of ensuring survival through the management of food resource (the optimisation of hunting macromammals). With this idea in mind, F. Djindjian proposes a model involving different degrees of territorial mobility and different types of palaeoeconomic management for the groups of hunter-gatherers that lived in Europe from around 23,000 to 15,000 BP. The functionality of settlements is a matter visited in several papers. M.A. Fano et al. discuss different functionalities for two Upper Magdalenian levels of the Cueva del Horno site in the Asón Basin (Cantabria, Spain), based on the analysis of lithic assemblages and faunal remains. During the occupation of Level 1, this settlement was used as a place for acquiring meat and animal hides. In contrast, during the occupation represented by Level 2, activities at the site were much more diverse, and included the working of animal hides and bone, lithic reduction, and the production of artistic objects. These authors complete their study with a detailed analysis of the territory in which this cave lies (a necessary step if one is to understand why the cave was occupied), and of the role played by the cave's geographical context. It should not go unnoticed that the site occupies a strategic position along the way between the Calera Valleys in Cantabria and Spain's Northern Plain (Meseta). The spatial analysis of Level 9 of the Cueva de Las Caldas site (Asturias, Spain), described by S. Corchón et al., allows the identification of activities undertaken at this location during the Middle Magdalenian. These included stone knapping and the production of art on slabs. In other work, involving the archaeozoological, technotypological and traceological analyses of the archaeological record of Level III at the Peña de Estebanvela site (Segovia, Spain), in combination with micro-spatial analysis, C. Cacho et al. report the detection of one area where stone knapping was practised, and another, more multifunctional area where the working of animal hides was an important activity. This analysis is accompanied by a vision of the use of the area beyond the site during the Upper Magdalenian, and of the management of resources (food and raw materials used in everyday life), which once again reveals important territorial mobility. Other articles examine the territorial mobility of human groups via the study of the transport of lithic raw materials. By comparing such resources, and their degree of reduction, at different sites in the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian, L. Fontes et al. identify exchange networks between the groups that occupied the settlements in the territory covering Cantabria to the west of Navarre. T. Pereira et al. reconstruct the mobility and behaviour of the groups that occupied the Vale de Boi site (Portugal) at different moments during the Upper Palaeolithic via the study of the sources of lithic raw materials. Not only did these human groups here use different raw materials, they sourced them from different places, both near and far. They therefore made use of a biologically and geomorphologically varied territory. The same ideas are followed by these authors in their analysis of the epipalaeolithic occupation of Pena d’ Agua (Portugal). On this occasion, the analysis indicates that the entire supply of raw lithic material was sourced nearby, and that the mobility of these people was reduced. This reinforces the idea of continuity from the final part of the Pleistocene through to the 8.2 ka cal BP event, and the abrupt and dramatic changes that followed. From the study of mobile art, Cl. Gravel reconstructs the possible social contacts between the human groups of the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian. This author undertakes species distribution modelling and performs maximum classification likelihood analyses on faunal data to reconstruct prehistoric biomes. The results, and the similarity in style of certain decorative motifs in this mobile artwork, allow her to differentiate between pieces that can be interpreted as providing proof of local mobility, and those that indicate the existence of social alliances between human groups. Finally, M. J. Iriarte-Chiapuso et al., via the study of open air sites, provide new data allowing the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the Gravettian in the Basque Country. This information adds greatly to the partial vision, based on the record of caves, which indicate intense cold to have reigned during this period and in this location. If open-air Gravettian settlements existed, it would appear that so too did warmer times. Several participants of the session declined the offer to publish their contributions (Heydari-Guran et al. Bottleneck and corridors and their impact on Paleolithic subsistence and land-use in the complex topography of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Romandini et al. First European Anatomically Modern Humans and the route of shells: chronological and qualitative evidence from the Veneto plain Region sites, and Alfredo Maximiano et al. Assessing expectations and limits of Intra-site analysis: From theory to practice (and vice-versa) in the Palaeolithic sites of La Garma cave (Omoño, Cantabria, Spain). Papers by other authors - Iriarte-Chiapusso et al., Gravel, and Pereira et al. - on epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers of the Middle Tagus were therefore invited to supplement the present offering. Madrid and Kiev December 15, 2015
Carmen Cacho National Archaeological Museum, Prehistory Department, Serrano 13, 28001 Madrid, Spain.
Lioudmila Iakovleva National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Archaeology 12 Stalingrad Heroes Avenue, Kiev 04210, Ukraine.
The use of space inside La Peña de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away f... more The use of space inside La Peña de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away from the site are analysed in this article in order to reconstruct the economic and social behaviour of the human group that occupied the site in the Upper Magdalenian (15,010e14,610 cal BP and 14,290e13,730 cal BP). Level III, which is geologically homogeneous and has yielded a large lithic and faunal record was selected for this purpose. The micro-spatial analysis of the level has differentiated two significant units in the central sector of the deposit which may correspond to an area used for intensive flint knapping (Unit 2), and a multi-functional area where hunting weapons were prepared, prey was butchered and defleshed, and hides were processed (Unit 3). The study of the use of the territory around the site reveals a strategy of diversified hunting, especially between late spring and early autumn, oriented towards ibex, horse, red deer and, to a lesser extent, chamois, roe deer and lynxes. This activity was complemented by the use of other resources, like fishing and gathering plants. Stocks of flint and personal ornaments made from marine molluscs confirm the territorial mobility of the residents of La Peña de Estebanvela.
La Peña de Estebanvela es un abrigo rocoso (1.065 m.s.n.m.) excavado en los conglomerados del Mio... more La Peña de Estebanvela es un abrigo rocoso (1.065 m.s.n.m.) excavado en los conglomerados del Mioceno. Se abre al Suroeste sobre la margen derecha del río Aguisejo, tributario del Riaza. Está enclavado en el sector Sureste de la cuenca del Duero, en un entorno montañoso, delimitado al Sur por las estribaciones del Sistema Central (Sierra de Ayllón) y al Noreste por el borde meridional del Sistema Ibérico. Entra en contacto hacia el Oeste con las llanuras de Aranda de Duero y, hacia el Este, con la cuenca de Almazán que, a través del valle del Jalón, enlaza con la del Ebro, lo que le confiere una posición estratégica privilegiada.
This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the resu... more This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the result of multidisciplinary research. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site's occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site's space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site's ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.
Carmen Cacho (coord.) Ocupaciones magdalenienses en el interior de la Península Ibérica: la Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia). Junta de Castilla y León/CSIC, Madrid 2013, 93-126., 2013
This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the resu... more This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the result of multidisciplinary research. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site’s occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site’s space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site’s ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.
El presente trabajo ofrece una revisión crítica del Paleolítico superior en la Meseta a la luz de... more El presente trabajo ofrece una revisión crítica del Paleolítico superior en la Meseta a la luz de los nuevos hallazgos producidos en los últimos años con una síntesis de las evidencias disponibles y su marco cronológico. Se interpreta en detalle el asentamiento segoviano de la Peña de Estebanvela. La riqueza de su registro arqueológico, la amplia secuencia cronoestratigráfica que presenta, así como la aplicación en su estudio de una metodología pluridisciplinar, hacen de este yacimiento un referente para el estudio del Magdaleniense en la Meseta. Por último, se muestra una breve revisión de las estaciones con arte rupestre del interior peninsular.
A collection of cut marks on Red-legged Partridge (Alectoris rufa) bones from the Magdalenian sit... more A collection of cut marks on Red-legged Partridge (Alectoris rufa) bones from the Magdalenian site of Tossal de la Roca (Spanish Levant region) is presented. The functional study undertaken aimed at revealing the purpose with which these cut marks were made. The analyses revealed which particular muscles of the avian body were affected by each cut. The data suggest that the purpose of most, if not all, of the cut marks was to detach the wings, while the animals were still fresh, from the body. It is argued that such procedure aimed at preventing deterioration of wings so that these could be used as ornaments. RESUMEN: Se estudian las marcas de corte realizadas en huesos de perdiz (Alectoris rufa), procedentes del yacimiento magdaleniense del Tossal de la Roca (Levante español). Se ha rea-lizado un estudio funcional de los cortes para conocer su intencionalidad. A tal fin, se ha anali-zado con detalle la parte de la anatomía muscular implicada en cada corte. Los resultados apun-tan a que el propósito era separar las alas completas, mientras la carne estaba aún cruda, probablemente para que no se deteriorasen éstas durante el cocinado del animal. Se supone por ello que las alas se utilizarían posteriormente como ornamentos.
Our approach to the museological and museographical project was to bring the visitor over to an a... more Our approach to the museological and museographical project was to bring the visitor over to an attractive presentation of the Prehistory, without falling down in an excess of simplification. The major challenge has been to transmit the main lines of temporary progression (the continuity of processes, the environment exploitation, the increase of social complexity…) and the way in which these factors distinguish each period that others.
At La Peña de Estebanvela, 43 portable art objects have been found in late Upper Palaeolithic lev... more At La Peña de Estebanvela, 43 portable art objects have been found in late Upper Palaeolithic levels. Most of the ensemble displays linear patterns forming complex signs. Three equids have also been identified. The decorative motifs at this site are presented and assessed in the context of the art of the last hunter-gatherer groups, demonstrating the existence of art in the last moments of the Palaeolithic (12 000 and 9500-9000 BP), after the time when Palaeolithic art is traditionally thought to have disappeared, at the end of the Magdalenian. A review at a European scale shows the existence of a common symbolism in the last stages of hunter-gatherer societies, which reflects social links.
R. Sala Ramos (ed). Los cazadores recolectores del Pleistoceno y del Holoceno en Iberia y el Estrecho de Gibraltar: estado actual del conocimiento del registro arqueológico. Universidad de Burgos. Fundación Atapuerca. 568-573., 2014
RESUMEN
Se presenta la interpretación global de La Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia), en el ... more RESUMEN
Se presenta la interpretación global de La Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia), en el contexto del Magdaleniense del centro de la Península Ibérica. Los estudios del registro (geoarqueológico, cronoestratigráfico, taxonómico, zooarqueológico y tafonómico, antracológico y fitolitólogico) permiten fijar la cronología de sus ocupaciones, en algunos casos la estacionalidad e inferir un patrón recurrente de explotación del territorio. Otras analíticas (tecnotipológico, traceológico, espacial) identifican una marcada estructuración interna del espacio y facilitan una aproximación a las posibles funcionalidades del asentamiento. Finalmente del examen detallado del conjunto ornamental y los cantos decorados se deduce una movilidad de estos grupos en ocasiones a grandes distancias.
ABSTRACT
The present work provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, on the framework of the Magdalenian in central Spain. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site’s occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site’s space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site’s ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.
The use of space inside La Pe~ na de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away... more The use of space inside La Pe~ na de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away from the site are analysed in this article in order to reconstruct the economic and social behaviour of the human group that occupied the site in the Upper Magdalenian (15,010e14,610 cal BP and 14,290e13,730 cal BP). Level III, which is geologically homogeneous and has yielded a large lithic and faunal record was selected for this purpose. The micro-spatial analysis of the level has differentiated two significant units in the central sector of the deposit which may correspond to an area used for intensive flint knapping (Unit 2), and a multi-functional area where hunting weapons were prepared, prey was butchered and defleshed, and hides were processed (Unit 3). The study of the use of the territory around the site reveals a strategy of diversified hunting, especially between late spring and early autumn, oriented towards ibex, horse, red deer and, to a lesser extent, chamois, roe deer and lynxes. This activity was complemented by the use of other resources, like fishing and gathering plants. Stocks of flint and personal ornaments made from marine molluscs confirm the territorial mobility of the residents of La Pe~ na de Estebanvela.
El hueso frontal de équido grabado con una representación de este mismo animal procedente de la C... more El hueso frontal de équido grabado con una representación de este mismo animal procedente de la Cueva de Hornos de la Peña (Cantabria), se recuperó a principios del pasado siglo XX en las excavaciones de H. Breuil, H. Obermaier y H. Alcalde del Río. A pesar de la atribución auriñaciense de sus excavadores, las diferentes publicaciones posteriores en que la pieza ha sido objeto de análisis, han mantenido siempre la duda de su pertenencia a este tecnocomplejo. A ello ha contribuido el hecho de que la estratigrafía de Hornos de la Peña no ha podido ser hasta el presente estudiada en profundidad, como también, muy probablemente, el carácter naturalista de su representación que parece alejarlo de los presupuestos artísticos del Paleolítico Superior inicial cantábrico. En este trabajo presentamos una serie de datos sobre la estratigrafía del yacimiento, obtenidos de diversos documentos inéditos conservados en el archivo del Museo Arqueológico Nacional de Madrid que, a nuestro juicio, corroboran la pertenencia de esta pieza de arte mueble al Auriñaciense.
he current issue has for origins a session of the scientific commission ‘Upper Palaeolithic of Eu... more he current issue has for origins a session of the scientific commission ‘Upper Palaeolithic of Eurasia” organized by the present authors for the September 2014 worldwide Congress of the International Union for the Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences (UISPP), held in Burgos, Spain. The first papers to reflect an interest in reconstructing the behaviour and social organisation of hunter-gatherers stem from the 1950s. These included studies of dwelling structures in open-air sites of the Russian Plain (P. Efmienko, S. Zamiatnine, I. Chovkoplass), and studies by North American researchers on the organisation of settlements, e.g., in the Virú Valley in Peru. It was A. Leroi Gourhan, however, who worked on reindeer cave in Arcy sur Cure and the Magdalenian camp-site of Pincevent in the 1960s and 1970s who really woke up Western European researchers with regard to this new focus of investigation into the Palaeolithic. He developed a new method of field work that would allow spatial relationships to be established between pieces of the archaeological record that reflect different phases of occupation - techniques that would be used over the above-mentioned decades in Dolni Vestonice, Pavlov and Milovice, Moravia, in Gönnersdorf, Germany, in Krakow-Spadzista, Poland, then later in certain sites in France, such as La Vigne-Brun in the Loire upper valley or Fontgrasse in eastern Languedoc and those of the Paris Basin (Etiolles, Marsangy, Verberie). The new perspectives that this approach afforded, supported by ethnographic parallels, facilitated the study of occupied areas and the activities undertaken by Upper Palaeolithic societies. The integration of the information provided by a landscape analysis with the archaeological record of the site, provides a more global view of the different models of land-use managed by hunter-gatherer groups, and is able to reveal mobility over sometimes very long distances. It also allows an understanding of how these groups organised their intrasite and intersite settlements, and provides a means of better characterising their functions and activities, and their adaptations to the environment, the landscape and the climate. This in turn allows advances to be made in terms of reconstructing the social and economic activities, and behaviour, of the different groups that occupied Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic. Given the chronological diversity represented in the articles of this issue, the decision was taken to organise them geographically, from Eastern to Western Europe. The first two articles thus deal with the Ukraine, where rich archaeological records have provided valuable information on the social and economic structures of human groups in Eastern Europe. Starting with excavations in Gontsy and the review of data from other contemporaneous sites on the great plain of Eastern Europe (Mezine, Mejiriche, Dobranichivka, etc.), L. Iakovleva investigates the social system of Mezinian hunters between 15,000 and 14,000 BP. These people, who organised themselves into rather large groups, spent much of the year living in spacious mammoth bone huts (residential settlements). The presence of smaller, seasonal sites, with no mammoth bone-based structures and containing non-local raw materials, reflects mobility across distances of sometimes over 600 km. Via archaeozoological analyses, L. Demay (and al.) studies the strategy of exploiting hunting resources at different sites on the Russian Plain (in the Dniester and Desna Valleys) during the Last Glacial Maximum (23,000-20,000 BP). These camps, characterised by a lithic industry based on local flint, were focused on hunting and butchering the mammoth. This large mammal was used as food, in the manufacture of tools, and to produce supports on which to undertake works of art. Other hunted animals included the reindeer and the horse; even certain carnivores appreciated for their fur were hunted, such as the fox. The relationship between material culture and ecology is also considered in this issue. F. Djindjian discusses the different material cultures of the Last Glacial Maximum in Europe as adaptive responses by human groups to climate change, responses with the aim of ensuring survival through the management of food resource (the optimisation of hunting macromammals). With this idea in mind, F. Djindjian proposes a model involving different degrees of territorial mobility and different types of palaeoeconomic management for the groups of hunter-gatherers that lived in Europe from around 23,000 to 15,000 BP. The functionality of settlements is a matter visited in several papers. M.A. Fano et al. discuss different functionalities for two Upper Magdalenian levels of the Cueva del Horno site in the Asón Basin (Cantabria, Spain), based on the analysis of lithic assemblages and faunal remains. During the occupation of Level 1, this settlement was used as a place for acquiring meat and animal hides. In contrast, during the occupation represented by Level 2, activities at the site were much more diverse, and included the working of animal hides and bone, lithic reduction, and the production of artistic objects. These authors complete their study with a detailed analysis of the territory in which this cave lies (a necessary step if one is to understand why the cave was occupied), and of the role played by the cave's geographical context. It should not go unnoticed that the site occupies a strategic position along the way between the Calera Valleys in Cantabria and Spain's Northern Plain (Meseta). The spatial analysis of Level 9 of the Cueva de Las Caldas site (Asturias, Spain), described by S. Corchón et al., allows the identification of activities undertaken at this location during the Middle Magdalenian. These included stone knapping and the production of art on slabs. In other work, involving the archaeozoological, technotypological and traceological analyses of the archaeological record of Level III at the Peña de Estebanvela site (Segovia, Spain), in combination with micro-spatial analysis, C. Cacho et al. report the detection of one area where stone knapping was practised, and another, more multifunctional area where the working of animal hides was an important activity. This analysis is accompanied by a vision of the use of the area beyond the site during the Upper Magdalenian, and of the management of resources (food and raw materials used in everyday life), which once again reveals important territorial mobility. Other articles examine the territorial mobility of human groups via the study of the transport of lithic raw materials. By comparing such resources, and their degree of reduction, at different sites in the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian, L. Fontes et al. identify exchange networks between the groups that occupied the settlements in the territory covering Cantabria to the west of Navarre. T. Pereira et al. reconstruct the mobility and behaviour of the groups that occupied the Vale de Boi site (Portugal) at different moments during the Upper Palaeolithic via the study of the sources of lithic raw materials. Not only did these human groups here use different raw materials, they sourced them from different places, both near and far. They therefore made use of a biologically and geomorphologically varied territory. The same ideas are followed by these authors in their analysis of the epipalaeolithic occupation of Pena d’ Agua (Portugal). On this occasion, the analysis indicates that the entire supply of raw lithic material was sourced nearby, and that the mobility of these people was reduced. This reinforces the idea of continuity from the final part of the Pleistocene through to the 8.2 ka cal BP event, and the abrupt and dramatic changes that followed. From the study of mobile art, Cl. Gravel reconstructs the possible social contacts between the human groups of the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian. This author undertakes species distribution modelling and performs maximum classification likelihood analyses on faunal data to reconstruct prehistoric biomes. The results, and the similarity in style of certain decorative motifs in this mobile artwork, allow her to differentiate between pieces that can be interpreted as providing proof of local mobility, and those that indicate the existence of social alliances between human groups. Finally, M. J. Iriarte-Chiapuso et al., via the study of open air sites, provide new data allowing the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the Gravettian in the Basque Country. This information adds greatly to the partial vision, based on the record of caves, which indicate intense cold to have reigned during this period and in this location. If open-air Gravettian settlements existed, it would appear that so too did warmer times. Several participants of the session declined the offer to publish their contributions (Heydari-Guran et al. Bottleneck and corridors and their impact on Paleolithic subsistence and land-use in the complex topography of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Romandini et al. First European Anatomically Modern Humans and the route of shells: chronological and qualitative evidence from the Veneto plain Region sites, and Alfredo Maximiano et al. Assessing expectations and limits of Intra-site analysis: From theory to practice (and vice-versa) in the Palaeolithic sites of La Garma cave (Omoño, Cantabria, Spain). Papers by other authors - Iriarte-Chiapusso et al., Gravel, and Pereira et al. - on epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers of the Middle Tagus were therefore invited to supplement the present offering. Madrid and Kiev December 15, 2015
Carmen Cacho National Archaeological Museum, Prehistory Department, Serrano 13, 28001 Madrid, Spain.
Lioudmila Iakovleva National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Archaeology 12 Stalingrad Heroes Avenue, Kiev 04210, Ukraine.
The use of space inside La Peña de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away f... more The use of space inside La Peña de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away from the site are analysed in this article in order to reconstruct the economic and social behaviour of the human group that occupied the site in the Upper Magdalenian (15,010e14,610 cal BP and 14,290e13,730 cal BP). Level III, which is geologically homogeneous and has yielded a large lithic and faunal record was selected for this purpose. The micro-spatial analysis of the level has differentiated two significant units in the central sector of the deposit which may correspond to an area used for intensive flint knapping (Unit 2), and a multi-functional area where hunting weapons were prepared, prey was butchered and defleshed, and hides were processed (Unit 3). The study of the use of the territory around the site reveals a strategy of diversified hunting, especially between late spring and early autumn, oriented towards ibex, horse, red deer and, to a lesser extent, chamois, roe deer and lynxes. This activity was complemented by the use of other resources, like fishing and gathering plants. Stocks of flint and personal ornaments made from marine molluscs confirm the territorial mobility of the residents of La Peña de Estebanvela.
La Peña de Estebanvela es un abrigo rocoso (1.065 m.s.n.m.) excavado en los conglomerados del Mio... more La Peña de Estebanvela es un abrigo rocoso (1.065 m.s.n.m.) excavado en los conglomerados del Mioceno. Se abre al Suroeste sobre la margen derecha del río Aguisejo, tributario del Riaza. Está enclavado en el sector Sureste de la cuenca del Duero, en un entorno montañoso, delimitado al Sur por las estribaciones del Sistema Central (Sierra de Ayllón) y al Noreste por el borde meridional del Sistema Ibérico. Entra en contacto hacia el Oeste con las llanuras de Aranda de Duero y, hacia el Este, con la cuenca de Almazán que, a través del valle del Jalón, enlaza con la del Ebro, lo que le confiere una posición estratégica privilegiada.
This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the resu... more This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the result of multidisciplinary research. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site's occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site's space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site's ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.
Carmen Cacho (coord.) Ocupaciones magdalenienses en el interior de la Península Ibérica: la Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia). Junta de Castilla y León/CSIC, Madrid 2013, 93-126., 2013
This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the resu... more This last chapter provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, the result of multidisciplinary research. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site’s occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site’s space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site’s ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.
El presente trabajo ofrece una revisión crítica del Paleolítico superior en la Meseta a la luz de... more El presente trabajo ofrece una revisión crítica del Paleolítico superior en la Meseta a la luz de los nuevos hallazgos producidos en los últimos años con una síntesis de las evidencias disponibles y su marco cronológico. Se interpreta en detalle el asentamiento segoviano de la Peña de Estebanvela. La riqueza de su registro arqueológico, la amplia secuencia cronoestratigráfica que presenta, así como la aplicación en su estudio de una metodología pluridisciplinar, hacen de este yacimiento un referente para el estudio del Magdaleniense en la Meseta. Por último, se muestra una breve revisión de las estaciones con arte rupestre del interior peninsular.
A collection of cut marks on Red-legged Partridge (Alectoris rufa) bones from the Magdalenian sit... more A collection of cut marks on Red-legged Partridge (Alectoris rufa) bones from the Magdalenian site of Tossal de la Roca (Spanish Levant region) is presented. The functional study undertaken aimed at revealing the purpose with which these cut marks were made. The analyses revealed which particular muscles of the avian body were affected by each cut. The data suggest that the purpose of most, if not all, of the cut marks was to detach the wings, while the animals were still fresh, from the body. It is argued that such procedure aimed at preventing deterioration of wings so that these could be used as ornaments. RESUMEN: Se estudian las marcas de corte realizadas en huesos de perdiz (Alectoris rufa), procedentes del yacimiento magdaleniense del Tossal de la Roca (Levante español). Se ha rea-lizado un estudio funcional de los cortes para conocer su intencionalidad. A tal fin, se ha anali-zado con detalle la parte de la anatomía muscular implicada en cada corte. Los resultados apun-tan a que el propósito era separar las alas completas, mientras la carne estaba aún cruda, probablemente para que no se deteriorasen éstas durante el cocinado del animal. Se supone por ello que las alas se utilizarían posteriormente como ornamentos.
Our approach to the museological and museographical project was to bring the visitor over to an a... more Our approach to the museological and museographical project was to bring the visitor over to an attractive presentation of the Prehistory, without falling down in an excess of simplification. The major challenge has been to transmit the main lines of temporary progression (the continuity of processes, the environment exploitation, the increase of social complexity…) and the way in which these factors distinguish each period that others.
At La Peña de Estebanvela, 43 portable art objects have been found in late Upper Palaeolithic lev... more At La Peña de Estebanvela, 43 portable art objects have been found in late Upper Palaeolithic levels. Most of the ensemble displays linear patterns forming complex signs. Three equids have also been identified. The decorative motifs at this site are presented and assessed in the context of the art of the last hunter-gatherer groups, demonstrating the existence of art in the last moments of the Palaeolithic (12 000 and 9500-9000 BP), after the time when Palaeolithic art is traditionally thought to have disappeared, at the end of the Magdalenian. A review at a European scale shows the existence of a common symbolism in the last stages of hunter-gatherer societies, which reflects social links.
R. Sala Ramos (ed). Los cazadores recolectores del Pleistoceno y del Holoceno en Iberia y el Estrecho de Gibraltar: estado actual del conocimiento del registro arqueológico. Universidad de Burgos. Fundación Atapuerca. 568-573., 2014
RESUMEN
Se presenta la interpretación global de La Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia), en el ... more RESUMEN
Se presenta la interpretación global de La Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia), en el contexto del Magdaleniense del centro de la Península Ibérica. Los estudios del registro (geoarqueológico, cronoestratigráfico, taxonómico, zooarqueológico y tafonómico, antracológico y fitolitólogico) permiten fijar la cronología de sus ocupaciones, en algunos casos la estacionalidad e inferir un patrón recurrente de explotación del territorio. Otras analíticas (tecnotipológico, traceológico, espacial) identifican una marcada estructuración interna del espacio y facilitan una aproximación a las posibles funcionalidades del asentamiento. Finalmente del examen detallado del conjunto ornamental y los cantos decorados se deduce una movilidad de estos grupos en ocasiones a grandes distancias.
ABSTRACT
The present work provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, on the framework of the Magdalenian in central Spain. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site’s occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site’s space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site’s ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.
The use of space inside La Pe~ na de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away... more The use of space inside La Pe~ na de Estebanvela Rock-shelter and the activities carried out away from the site are analysed in this article in order to reconstruct the economic and social behaviour of the human group that occupied the site in the Upper Magdalenian (15,010e14,610 cal BP and 14,290e13,730 cal BP). Level III, which is geologically homogeneous and has yielded a large lithic and faunal record was selected for this purpose. The micro-spatial analysis of the level has differentiated two significant units in the central sector of the deposit which may correspond to an area used for intensive flint knapping (Unit 2), and a multi-functional area where hunting weapons were prepared, prey was butchered and defleshed, and hides were processed (Unit 3). The study of the use of the territory around the site reveals a strategy of diversified hunting, especially between late spring and early autumn, oriented towards ibex, horse, red deer and, to a lesser extent, chamois, roe deer and lynxes. This activity was complemented by the use of other resources, like fishing and gathering plants. Stocks of flint and personal ornaments made from marine molluscs confirm the territorial mobility of the residents of La Pe~ na de Estebanvela.
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Papers by Carmen Cacho
The first papers to reflect an interest in reconstructing the behaviour and social organisation of hunter-gatherers stem from the 1950s. These included studies of dwelling structures in open-air sites of the Russian Plain (P. Efmienko, S. Zamiatnine, I. Chovkoplass), and studies by North American researchers on the organisation of settlements, e.g., in the Virú Valley in Peru. It was A. Leroi Gourhan, however, who worked on reindeer cave in Arcy sur Cure and the Magdalenian camp-site of Pincevent in the 1960s and 1970s who really woke up Western European researchers with regard to this new focus of investigation into the Palaeolithic. He developed a new method of field work that would allow spatial relationships to be established between pieces of the archaeological record that reflect different phases of occupation - techniques that would be used over the above-mentioned decades in Dolni Vestonice, Pavlov and Milovice, Moravia, in Gönnersdorf, Germany, in Krakow-Spadzista, Poland, then later in certain sites in France, such as La Vigne-Brun in the Loire upper valley or Fontgrasse in eastern Languedoc and those of the Paris Basin (Etiolles, Marsangy, Verberie). The new perspectives that this approach afforded, supported by ethnographic parallels, facilitated the study of occupied areas and the activities undertaken by Upper Palaeolithic societies.
The integration of the information provided by a landscape analysis with the archaeological record of the site, provides a more global view of the different models of land-use managed by hunter-gatherer groups, and is able to reveal mobility over sometimes very long distances. It also allows an understanding of how these groups organised their intrasite and intersite settlements, and provides a means of better characterising their functions and activities, and their adaptations to the environment, the landscape and the climate. This in turn allows advances to be made in terms of reconstructing the social and economic activities, and behaviour, of the different groups that occupied Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic.
Given the chronological diversity represented in the articles of this issue, the decision was taken to organise them geographically, from Eastern to Western Europe. The first two articles thus deal with the Ukraine, where rich archaeological records have provided valuable information on the social and economic structures of human groups in Eastern Europe. Starting with excavations in Gontsy and the review of data from other contemporaneous sites on the great plain of Eastern Europe (Mezine, Mejiriche, Dobranichivka, etc.), L. Iakovleva investigates the social system of Mezinian hunters between 15,000 and 14,000 BP. These people, who organised themselves into rather large groups, spent much of the year living in spacious mammoth bone huts (residential settlements). The presence of smaller, seasonal sites, with no mammoth bone-based structures and containing non-local raw materials, reflects mobility across distances of sometimes over 600 km.
Via archaeozoological analyses, L. Demay (and al.) studies the strategy of exploiting hunting resources at different sites on the Russian Plain (in the Dniester and Desna Valleys) during the Last Glacial Maximum (23,000-20,000 BP). These camps, characterised by a lithic industry based on local flint, were focused on hunting and butchering the mammoth. This large mammal was used as food, in the manufacture of tools, and to produce supports on which to undertake works of art. Other hunted animals included the reindeer and the horse; even certain carnivores appreciated for their fur were hunted, such as the fox.
The relationship between material culture and ecology is also considered in this issue. F. Djindjian discusses the different material cultures of the Last Glacial Maximum in Europe as adaptive responses by human groups to climate change, responses with the aim of ensuring survival through the management of food resource (the optimisation of hunting macromammals). With this idea in mind, F. Djindjian proposes a model involving different degrees of territorial mobility and different types of palaeoeconomic management for the groups of hunter-gatherers that lived in Europe from around 23,000 to 15,000 BP.
The functionality of settlements is a matter visited in several papers. M.A. Fano et al. discuss different functionalities for two Upper Magdalenian levels of the Cueva del Horno site in the Asón Basin (Cantabria, Spain), based on the analysis of lithic assemblages and faunal remains. During the occupation of Level 1, this settlement was used as a place for acquiring meat and animal hides. In contrast, during the occupation represented by Level 2, activities at the site were much more diverse, and included the working of animal hides and bone, lithic reduction, and the production of artistic objects. These authors complete their study with a detailed analysis of the territory in which this cave lies (a necessary step if one is to understand why the cave was occupied), and of the role played by the cave's geographical context. It should not go unnoticed that the site occupies a strategic position along the way between the Calera Valleys in Cantabria and Spain's Northern Plain (Meseta).
The spatial analysis of Level 9 of the Cueva de Las Caldas site (Asturias, Spain), described by S. Corchón et al., allows the identification of activities undertaken at this location during the Middle Magdalenian. These included stone knapping and the production of art on slabs. In other work, involving the archaeozoological, technotypological and traceological analyses of the archaeological record of Level III at the Peña de Estebanvela site (Segovia, Spain), in combination with micro-spatial analysis, C. Cacho et al. report the detection of one area where stone knapping was practised, and another, more multifunctional area where the working of animal hides was an important activity. This analysis is accompanied by a vision of the use of the area beyond the site during the Upper Magdalenian, and of the management of resources (food and raw materials used in everyday life), which once again reveals important territorial mobility.
Other articles examine the territorial mobility of human groups via the study of the transport of lithic raw materials. By comparing such resources, and their degree of reduction, at different sites in the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian, L. Fontes et al. identify exchange networks between the groups that occupied the settlements in the territory covering Cantabria to the west of Navarre.
T. Pereira et al. reconstruct the mobility and behaviour of the groups that occupied the Vale de Boi site (Portugal) at different moments during the Upper Palaeolithic via the study of the sources of lithic raw materials. Not only did these human groups here use different raw materials, they sourced them from different places, both near and far. They therefore made use of a biologically and geomorphologically varied territory. The same ideas are followed by these authors in their analysis of the epipalaeolithic occupation of Pena d’ Agua (Portugal). On this occasion, the analysis indicates that the entire supply of raw lithic material was sourced nearby, and that the mobility of these people was reduced. This reinforces the idea of continuity from the final part of the Pleistocene through to the 8.2 ka cal BP event, and the abrupt and dramatic changes that followed.
From the study of mobile art, Cl. Gravel reconstructs the possible social contacts between the human groups of the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian. This author undertakes species distribution modelling and performs maximum classification likelihood analyses on faunal data to reconstruct prehistoric biomes. The results, and the similarity in style of certain decorative motifs in this mobile artwork, allow her to differentiate between pieces that can be interpreted as providing proof of local mobility, and those that indicate the existence of social alliances between human groups.
Finally, M. J. Iriarte-Chiapuso et al., via the study of open air sites, provide new data allowing the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the Gravettian in the Basque Country. This information adds greatly to the partial vision, based on the record of caves, which indicate intense cold to have reigned during this period and in this location. If open-air Gravettian settlements existed, it would appear that so too did warmer times.
Several participants of the session declined the offer to publish their contributions (Heydari-Guran et al. Bottleneck and corridors and their impact on Paleolithic subsistence and land-use in the complex topography of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Romandini et al. First European Anatomically Modern Humans and the route of shells: chronological and qualitative evidence from the Veneto plain Region sites, and Alfredo Maximiano et al. Assessing expectations and limits of Intra-site analysis: From theory to practice (and vice-versa) in the Palaeolithic sites of La Garma cave (Omoño, Cantabria, Spain). Papers by other authors - Iriarte-Chiapusso et al., Gravel, and Pereira et al. - on epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers of the Middle Tagus were therefore invited to supplement the present offering.
Madrid and Kiev
December 15, 2015
Carmen Cacho
National Archaeological Museum, Prehistory Department, Serrano 13, 28001 Madrid, Spain.
Lioudmila Iakovleva
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Archaeology 12 Stalingrad Heroes Avenue, Kiev 04210, Ukraine.
Se presenta la interpretación global de La Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia), en el contexto del Magdaleniense del centro de la Península Ibérica. Los estudios del registro (geoarqueológico, cronoestratigráfico, taxonómico, zooarqueológico y tafonómico, antracológico y fitolitólogico) permiten fijar la cronología de sus ocupaciones, en algunos casos la estacionalidad e inferir un patrón recurrente de explotación del territorio. Otras analíticas (tecnotipológico, traceológico, espacial) identifican una marcada estructuración interna del espacio y facilitan una aproximación a las posibles funcionalidades del asentamiento. Finalmente del examen detallado del conjunto ornamental y los cantos decorados se deduce una movilidad de estos grupos en ocasiones a grandes distancias.
ABSTRACT
The present work provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, on the framework of the Magdalenian in central Spain. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site’s occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site’s space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site’s ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.
Books by Carmen Cacho
2015 by Carmen Cacho
The first papers to reflect an interest in reconstructing the behaviour and social organisation of hunter-gatherers stem from the 1950s. These included studies of dwelling structures in open-air sites of the Russian Plain (P. Efmienko, S. Zamiatnine, I. Chovkoplass), and studies by North American researchers on the organisation of settlements, e.g., in the Virú Valley in Peru. It was A. Leroi Gourhan, however, who worked on reindeer cave in Arcy sur Cure and the Magdalenian camp-site of Pincevent in the 1960s and 1970s who really woke up Western European researchers with regard to this new focus of investigation into the Palaeolithic. He developed a new method of field work that would allow spatial relationships to be established between pieces of the archaeological record that reflect different phases of occupation - techniques that would be used over the above-mentioned decades in Dolni Vestonice, Pavlov and Milovice, Moravia, in Gönnersdorf, Germany, in Krakow-Spadzista, Poland, then later in certain sites in France, such as La Vigne-Brun in the Loire upper valley or Fontgrasse in eastern Languedoc and those of the Paris Basin (Etiolles, Marsangy, Verberie). The new perspectives that this approach afforded, supported by ethnographic parallels, facilitated the study of occupied areas and the activities undertaken by Upper Palaeolithic societies.
The integration of the information provided by a landscape analysis with the archaeological record of the site, provides a more global view of the different models of land-use managed by hunter-gatherer groups, and is able to reveal mobility over sometimes very long distances. It also allows an understanding of how these groups organised their intrasite and intersite settlements, and provides a means of better characterising their functions and activities, and their adaptations to the environment, the landscape and the climate. This in turn allows advances to be made in terms of reconstructing the social and economic activities, and behaviour, of the different groups that occupied Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic.
Given the chronological diversity represented in the articles of this issue, the decision was taken to organise them geographically, from Eastern to Western Europe. The first two articles thus deal with the Ukraine, where rich archaeological records have provided valuable information on the social and economic structures of human groups in Eastern Europe. Starting with excavations in Gontsy and the review of data from other contemporaneous sites on the great plain of Eastern Europe (Mezine, Mejiriche, Dobranichivka, etc.), L. Iakovleva investigates the social system of Mezinian hunters between 15,000 and 14,000 BP. These people, who organised themselves into rather large groups, spent much of the year living in spacious mammoth bone huts (residential settlements). The presence of smaller, seasonal sites, with no mammoth bone-based structures and containing non-local raw materials, reflects mobility across distances of sometimes over 600 km.
Via archaeozoological analyses, L. Demay (and al.) studies the strategy of exploiting hunting resources at different sites on the Russian Plain (in the Dniester and Desna Valleys) during the Last Glacial Maximum (23,000-20,000 BP). These camps, characterised by a lithic industry based on local flint, were focused on hunting and butchering the mammoth. This large mammal was used as food, in the manufacture of tools, and to produce supports on which to undertake works of art. Other hunted animals included the reindeer and the horse; even certain carnivores appreciated for their fur were hunted, such as the fox.
The relationship between material culture and ecology is also considered in this issue. F. Djindjian discusses the different material cultures of the Last Glacial Maximum in Europe as adaptive responses by human groups to climate change, responses with the aim of ensuring survival through the management of food resource (the optimisation of hunting macromammals). With this idea in mind, F. Djindjian proposes a model involving different degrees of territorial mobility and different types of palaeoeconomic management for the groups of hunter-gatherers that lived in Europe from around 23,000 to 15,000 BP.
The functionality of settlements is a matter visited in several papers. M.A. Fano et al. discuss different functionalities for two Upper Magdalenian levels of the Cueva del Horno site in the Asón Basin (Cantabria, Spain), based on the analysis of lithic assemblages and faunal remains. During the occupation of Level 1, this settlement was used as a place for acquiring meat and animal hides. In contrast, during the occupation represented by Level 2, activities at the site were much more diverse, and included the working of animal hides and bone, lithic reduction, and the production of artistic objects. These authors complete their study with a detailed analysis of the territory in which this cave lies (a necessary step if one is to understand why the cave was occupied), and of the role played by the cave's geographical context. It should not go unnoticed that the site occupies a strategic position along the way between the Calera Valleys in Cantabria and Spain's Northern Plain (Meseta).
The spatial analysis of Level 9 of the Cueva de Las Caldas site (Asturias, Spain), described by S. Corchón et al., allows the identification of activities undertaken at this location during the Middle Magdalenian. These included stone knapping and the production of art on slabs. In other work, involving the archaeozoological, technotypological and traceological analyses of the archaeological record of Level III at the Peña de Estebanvela site (Segovia, Spain), in combination with micro-spatial analysis, C. Cacho et al. report the detection of one area where stone knapping was practised, and another, more multifunctional area where the working of animal hides was an important activity. This analysis is accompanied by a vision of the use of the area beyond the site during the Upper Magdalenian, and of the management of resources (food and raw materials used in everyday life), which once again reveals important territorial mobility.
Other articles examine the territorial mobility of human groups via the study of the transport of lithic raw materials. By comparing such resources, and their degree of reduction, at different sites in the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian, L. Fontes et al. identify exchange networks between the groups that occupied the settlements in the territory covering Cantabria to the west of Navarre.
T. Pereira et al. reconstruct the mobility and behaviour of the groups that occupied the Vale de Boi site (Portugal) at different moments during the Upper Palaeolithic via the study of the sources of lithic raw materials. Not only did these human groups here use different raw materials, they sourced them from different places, both near and far. They therefore made use of a biologically and geomorphologically varied territory. The same ideas are followed by these authors in their analysis of the epipalaeolithic occupation of Pena d’ Agua (Portugal). On this occasion, the analysis indicates that the entire supply of raw lithic material was sourced nearby, and that the mobility of these people was reduced. This reinforces the idea of continuity from the final part of the Pleistocene through to the 8.2 ka cal BP event, and the abrupt and dramatic changes that followed.
From the study of mobile art, Cl. Gravel reconstructs the possible social contacts between the human groups of the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian. This author undertakes species distribution modelling and performs maximum classification likelihood analyses on faunal data to reconstruct prehistoric biomes. The results, and the similarity in style of certain decorative motifs in this mobile artwork, allow her to differentiate between pieces that can be interpreted as providing proof of local mobility, and those that indicate the existence of social alliances between human groups.
Finally, M. J. Iriarte-Chiapuso et al., via the study of open air sites, provide new data allowing the palaeoenvironmental reconstruction of the Gravettian in the Basque Country. This information adds greatly to the partial vision, based on the record of caves, which indicate intense cold to have reigned during this period and in this location. If open-air Gravettian settlements existed, it would appear that so too did warmer times.
Several participants of the session declined the offer to publish their contributions (Heydari-Guran et al. Bottleneck and corridors and their impact on Paleolithic subsistence and land-use in the complex topography of the Zagros Mountains of Iran, Romandini et al. First European Anatomically Modern Humans and the route of shells: chronological and qualitative evidence from the Veneto plain Region sites, and Alfredo Maximiano et al. Assessing expectations and limits of Intra-site analysis: From theory to practice (and vice-versa) in the Palaeolithic sites of La Garma cave (Omoño, Cantabria, Spain). Papers by other authors - Iriarte-Chiapusso et al., Gravel, and Pereira et al. - on epipalaeolithic hunter-gatherers of the Middle Tagus were therefore invited to supplement the present offering.
Madrid and Kiev
December 15, 2015
Carmen Cacho
National Archaeological Museum, Prehistory Department, Serrano 13, 28001 Madrid, Spain.
Lioudmila Iakovleva
National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, Institute of Archaeology 12 Stalingrad Heroes Avenue, Kiev 04210, Ukraine.
Se presenta la interpretación global de La Peña de Estebanvela (Ayllón, Segovia), en el contexto del Magdaleniense del centro de la Península Ibérica. Los estudios del registro (geoarqueológico, cronoestratigráfico, taxonómico, zooarqueológico y tafonómico, antracológico y fitolitólogico) permiten fijar la cronología de sus ocupaciones, en algunos casos la estacionalidad e inferir un patrón recurrente de explotación del territorio. Otras analíticas (tecnotipológico, traceológico, espacial) identifican una marcada estructuración interna del espacio y facilitan una aproximación a las posibles funcionalidades del asentamiento. Finalmente del examen detallado del conjunto ornamental y los cantos decorados se deduce una movilidad de estos grupos en ocasiones a grandes distancias.
ABSTRACT
The present work provides an overall interpretation of the La Peña de Estebanvela site, on the framework of the Magdalenian in central Spain. Studies of the geoarchaeological, chronostratigraphic, taxonomic, zooarchaeological, taphonomic, anthracological and phytological records allow the chronology of the site’s occupations to be determined. Sometimes even the seasonality of occupation can be established, and patterns of territory exploitation discerned. The results of technotypological, traceological and spatial analyses show a marked internal structuring of the site’s space, and provide clues on the possible functions of the site. Finally, the detailed examination of the site’s ornamental pieces and decorated stones shows the groups that used the rock shelter sometimes travelled great distances.