Fire and brief human occupations in Iberia during MIS 4: Evidence from Abric del Pastor (Alcoy, Spain)
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Title: | Fire and brief human occupations in Iberia during MIS 4: Evidence from Abric del Pastor (Alcoy, Spain) |
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Authors: | Mallol, Carolina | Hernández, Cristo M. | Mercier, Norbert | Falguères, Christophe | Carrancho, Ángel | Cabanes, Dan | Vidal-Matutano, Paloma | Connolly, Rory | Pérez, Leopoldo | Mayor, Alejandro | Ben Arous, Eslem | Galván, Bertila |
Research Group/s: | Prehistoria y Protohistoria |
Center, Department or Service: | Universidad de Alicante. Departamento de Prehistoria, Arqueología, Historia Antigua, Filología Griega y Filología Latina |
Keywords: | Fire | Brief human occupations | Iberia | MIS 4 | Abric del Pastor | Alcoy | Spain |
Knowledge Area: | Prehistoria |
Issue Date: | 4-Dec-2019 |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Citation: | Scientific Reports. 2019, 9: 18281. doi:10.1038/s41598-019-54305-9 |
Abstract: | There is a relatively low amount of Middle Paleolithic sites in Europe dating to MIS 4. Of the few that exist, several of them lack evidence for anthropogenic fire, raising the question of how this period of global cooling may have affected the Neanderthal population. The Iberian Peninsula is a key area to explore this issue, as it has been considered as a glacial refugium during critical periods of the Neanderthal timeline and might therefore yield archaeological contexts in which we can explore possible changes in the behaviour and settlement patterns of Neanderthal groups during MIS 4. Here we report recent data from Abric del Pastor, a small rock shelter in Alcoy (Alicante, Spain) with a stratified deposit containing Middle Palaeolithic remains. We present absolute dates that frame the sequence within MIS 4 and multi-proxy geoarchaeological evidence of in situ anthropogenic fire, including microscopic evidence of in situ combustion residues and thermally altered sediment. We also present archaeostratigraphic evidence of recurrent, functionally diverse, brief human occupation of the rock shelter. Our results suggest that Neanderthals occupied the Central Mediterranean coast of the Iberian Peninsula during MIS 4, that these Neanderthals were not undergoing climatic stress and they were habitual fire users. |
Sponsor: | This research was funded by a Leakey Foundation General Grant, Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities Projects HAR2008-06117/HIST and HAR2015-68321-P, Junta de Castilla y León-FEDER Project BU235P18, the LabEx Sciences Archéologiques de Bordeaux (LaScArBx ANR-10-LABX-52) and ERC Consolidator Grant ERC-CoG-2014. Archaeological excavations at Abric del Pastor are supported by the Archaeological Museum of Alcoy and the Government of Valencia Cultural Heritage Department. |
URI: | http://hdl.handle.net/10045/99846 |
ISSN: | 2045-2322 |
DOI: | 10.1038/s41598-019-54305-9 |
Language: | eng |
Type: | info:eu-repo/semantics/article |
Rights: | Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Peer Review: | si |
Publisher version: | https://doi.org/10.1038/s41598-019-54305-9 |
Appears in Collections: | INV - Prehistoria y Protohistoria - Artículos de Revistas |
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