A 400,000-year-old Acheulean assemblage associated with the Aroeira-3 human cranium (Gruta da Aroeira, Almonda karst system, Portugal)

Daura, Joan; Sanz, Montserrat; Deschamps, Marianne; Matías, Henrique; Igreja, Marina; Villaescusa, Lucía; Gómez, Sandra Dorado; Rubio, Albert; Souto, Pedro; Rodrigues, Filipa; Zilhão, João

doi:10.1016/j.crpv.2018.03.003

Cited by 28 publications

(31 citation statements)

References 92 publications

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“…In our excavation trench the stratification tends to horizontal because it lies at the foot of a talus whose dip is, however, significant. Like everything else-stone tools 50 , cut-marked or otherwise human-modified bones, or the Aroeira 1-3 human fossils (cranium and teeth) 36,72 -the burnt materials found in our trench must have been syn-depositionally displaced along the talus from a primary locus of deposition located upslope, nearer the cave porch-as proposed for levels 15-19 of Gruta da Oliveira, a Middle Palaeolithic cave site located ca. 40 m lower down in the Almonda escarpment 73 .…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Early evidence of fire in south-western Europe: the Acheulean site of Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal)

Sanz

Daura

Cabanes

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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the site of Gruta da Aroeira (torres novas, portugal), with evidence of human occupancy dating to ca. 400 ka (Marine Isotope Stage 11), is one of the very few Middle Pleistocene localities to have provided a fossil hominin cranium associated with Acheulean bifaces in a cave context. the multianalytic study reported here of the by-products of burning recorded in layer X suggests the presence of anthropogenic fires at the site, among the oldest such evidence in southwestern Europe. The burnt material consists of bone, charcoal and, possibly, quartzite cobbles. These finds were made in a small area of the cave and in two separate occupation horizons. our results add to our still-limited knowledge about the controlled use of fire in the Lower Palaeolithic and contribute to ongoing debates on the behavioural complexity of the Acheulean of europe. Controlling the use of fire was a technological milestone in human evolution that broadened diet, expanded the ecological range, and provided a powerful defensive and offensive tool 1-4. It required a complex mind, capable of predicting fire behaviour and fuel needs, and imposed high energetic costs 5. Identifying the point in human

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 83%

Early evidence of fire in south-western Europe: the Acheulean site of Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal)

Sanz

Daura

Cabanes

et al. 2020

Sci Rep

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“…Beyond Porzuna and Campo de Calatrava, other Spanish sites such as El Sartalejo (Cáceres) similarly display LCTs produced from large cobbles with a low degree of façonnage (Santonja 1986;Moloney, 1992). Moreover, sites including Gruta da Aroeira (Daura et al, 2018) and Santa Ana (Ollé et al, 2014), together with Galería (Atapuerca) ( Méndez-Quintas et al, 2006;2018), showing that LCTs have a wider distribution across the Iberian Peninsula.…”

Section: Integrating Porzuna Within the Acheulean At The Iberian Penimentioning

confidence: 99%

Morphometric and technological analysis of Acheulean large cutting tools from Porzuna (Ciudad Real, Spain) and questions of African affinities

Arroyo

Proffitt

Key

2019

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

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The Acheulean of central Spain is well known from a handful of sites. Rarely, however, are these assemblages subject to systematic technological and morphological analyses. Numerous years of surface collection within the Porzuna area (Ciudad Real) has yielded a substantial collection of Lower-Middle Palaeolithic lithic material (with over 8000 stone tools), now housed at the Museo Provincial of Ciudad Real. It has been suggested that the LCT technology of the Spanish Acheulean may have been directly influenced by ESA African technological traditions; however, others have suggested a European origin for the technology. Here we present a techno-typological and 3D morphometric analysis of the LCT's collected at Porzuna. We compare the Porzuna artefacts to other known local assemblages from Ciudad Real as well as Acheulean LCT's from north, east and South Africa, to investigate potential technological and morphological affinities. Results of our analysis show that despite sharing technological similarities, such as the use of large flakes as blanks, significant morphological differences exist between the African and Iberian LCTs.

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“…In central Portugal, evidence from the Aroeira cave indicates that the Mousterian was not yet established by ca. 280 ka (Daura et al, 2018;Hoffmann et al, 2013) or by ca. 201 ka (Cunha et al, 2017b).…”

Section: The Middle Palaeolithic In Westernmost Iberiamentioning

confidence: 99%

Geoarchaeology of the Cobrinhos site (Vila Velha de Ródão, Portugal) - a record of the earliest Mousterian in western Iberia

Pereira

Cunha

Martins

et al. 2019

Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports

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Cobrinhos (Vila Velha do Ródão, central eastern Portugal) is a Mousterian site found during factory construction in 2014. This area is located in the Lower Tejo valley, which is characterized in terms of geomorphology by six river terraces, numbered downwards (T1 to T6), with Palaeolithic industries associated only with T4 to T6. Terrace T4 was recently dated as spanning ca. 340 ka to 155 ka, with Acheulean in the basal and middle levels and early Mousterian in the uppermost levels. The geological context at Cobrinhos is a colluvial unit that links to the top of T4. It has evidence for palaeoweathering with the same characteristics as seen in T1 to T4, considerably different from that seen in T5 and T6. Despite disturbance by ploughing, the site shows a uniform distribution of sizes and shapes of lithic artefacts, with thousands of implements < 30 mm and a coherent Mousterian assemblage including Levallois and discoidal reduction pieces, Levallois flakes, blades and points, pseudo-Levallois points, notches, denticulates, sidescrapers, and an absence of Acheulean or Upper Palaeolithic tools. The available data suggest that the colluvial unit is coeval with the topmost T4 deposits and that the Cobrinhos industry is in its original geomorphological context. Although the colluvial unit cannot be dated directly, from the combination of site data and available published luminescence ages for T4, we suggest a probable age of ca. 165 to 155 ka for this industry. These results are of relevance in the investigation of the demise of archaic Pleistocene human populations and the proliferation of Neanderthal groups in Iberia.

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A 400,000-year-old Acheulean assemblage associated with the Aroeira-3 human cranium (Gruta da Aroeira, Almonda karst system, Portugal)

Cited by 28 publications

References 92 publications

Early evidence of fire in south-western Europe: the Acheulean site of Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal)

Early evidence of fire in south-western Europe: the Acheulean site of Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal)

Morphometric and technological analysis of Acheulean large cutting tools from Porzuna (Ciudad Real, Spain) and questions of African affinities

Geoarchaeology of the Cobrinhos site (Vila Velha de Ródão, Portugal) - a record of the earliest Mousterian in western Iberia

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