A new Lower Pleistocene archeological site in Europe (Vallparadís, Barcelona, Spain)

Abstract

Here we report the discovery of a new late Lower Pleistocene site named Vallparadís (Barcelona, Spain) that produced a rich archeological and paleontological sequence dated from the upper boundary of the Jaramillo subchron to the early Middle Pleistocene. This deposit contained a main archeological layer with numerous artifacts and a rich macromammalian assemblage, some of which bore cut marks, that could indicate that hominins had access to carcasses. Paleomagnetic analysis, electron spin resonance-uranium series (ESR-US), and the biostratigraphic chronological position of the macro-and micromammal and lithic assemblages of this layer reinforce the proposal that hominins inhabited Europe during the Lower Pleistocene. The archeological sequence provides key information on the successful adaptation of European hominins that preceded the well-known fossil population from Atapuerca and succeeded the finds from Orce basin. Hence, this discovery enables us to close a major chronological gap in the early prehistory of Iberia. According to the information in this paper and the available data from these other sites, we propose that Mediterranean Western Europe was repeatedly and perhaps continuously occupied during the late Matuyama chron.

Datación por <i>ESR</i> del yacimiento arqueológico del Pleistoceno inferior de Vallparadís (Terrassa, Cataluña, España)

“…La excavación se centró en el nivel arqueológico más rico (nivel 10), ubicado en la parte superior de la unidad 7. Considerado como el nivel de referencia arqueológica para Vallparadís, contenía una industria lítica arcaica abundante atribuida al Modo 1 u Olduvaiense (Lumley et al 2009;Martínez et al 2010). Sus características tecno-tipológicas son similares a las de los conjuntos de otros yacimientos antiguos mediterráneos, como Gran Dolina-TD6, Pont-de-Lavaud, Dmanisi o Bizat Ruhama .…”

Uneven Data Quality and the Earliest Occupation of Europe—the Case of Untermassfeld (Germany)

“…The authors conclude that the stone tools and the humanly modified faunal remains from Untermassfeld provide evidence for the earliest hominin presence in European continental mid-latitudes at about 50°north. Together with the evidence from inferred contemporaneous sites such as Vallparadis (Spain) (Martínez et al 2010) and Le Vallonet (France) (de Lumley 1988;Michel et al 2017), they see this as additional evidence that humans were wellestablished in Europe already 1 million years ago. If these claims are substantiated, the Untermassfeld site, a striking outlier in the geographical distribution of early Palaeolithic sites (Rolland 2013;Wiśniewski et al 2014) thus far and at odds with the spatio-temporal pattern described above, would indeed be a very interesting occurrence.…”

“…The site of Untermassfeld has often been mentioned in one line with Vallparadís (Catalonia, Spain), as dating to the same time period and sharing a comparable mode 1 stone industry, B… which allows us to hypothesise that human groups with the same technology and acting as predators spread throughout the continent from the Jaramillo subchron onwards^ (Garcia Garriga et al 2013, 73). As at Untermassfeld, the primitive lithic assemblage from Vallparadis has been selected from stone rich (alluvial fan) deposits (Garcia Garriga et al 2012;Martínez et al 2010). Some of the excavators of the Vallparadís site however explicitly question the artefactual character of the lithics presented by Martinez and colleagues (2010), stressing that the morphology of the lithics and the sedimentological data from the Vallparadís site do not support an anthropogenic origin of the recovered lithic pieces: they are not in primary context, fit very well in the general background of the lithic source area, and generally display rounded edges that cannot be accounted for by (the inferred) transport during a mudflow event (Madurell-Malapeira et al 2012).…”

The Early Acheulean technology of Barranc de la Boella (Catalonia, Spain)

“…Firstly, most of the European Mode 1-Early Pleistocene assemblages display a single technique for flake production, usually the unipolar longitudinal (e.g. Atapuerca-TE9 (De Lombera-Hermida et al, 2015), L ezignan-la-C ebe (Crochet et al, 2009), Pont de Lavaud (Despri ee et al, 2006), Atapuerca-TD3-4 (Oll e et al,2013, Vallparadís (Martínez et al, 2010), Happisburgh (Parfitt et al, 2010) and Pakefield (Parfitt et al, 2005). However, the orthogonal, bipolar on anvil and even centripetal methods (Fuente Nueva and Barranco Le on (Toro-Moyano et al, 2013;Barsky et al, 2014), Pirro Nord (Arzarello et al, 2007;Arzarello and Peretto, 2010), Monte Poggiolo (Peretto et al, 1998;Arzarello and Peretto, 2010), and Atapuerca-TD6 may be represented as well.…”