Fire and brief human occupations in Iberia during MIS 4: Evidence from Abric del Pastor (Alcoy, Spain)

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.

Late Neanderthal short-term and specialized occupations at the Abri du Maras (South-East France, level 4.1, MIS 3)

“…Even in archaeological contexts of high temporal resolution, each stratigraphically-expressed palimpsest is acknowledged to integrate successive occupation events (i.e. Julien et al 1992;Vaquero 2008Henry 2012;Vaquero et al 2012a;Chacón et al 2015;Machado et al 2013Machado et al , 2019Mallol et al 2019;Real et al 2019).…”

Neanderthal Spatial Patterns and Occupation Dynamics: A Focus on the Central Region in Mediterranean Iberia

“…VI (62 ka ± 10/9 ka), as well as an OSL date from a quartz grain recovered in S.U. IVd (63 ka ± 5 ka), chronologically place Neanderthal activity at the site within MIS 4 and the early stages of MIS 3 (Machado et al 2013;Hernández et al 2014;Connolly et al 2019;Mallol et al 2019).…”

“…They are empty spaces, covering an area of about 6 m 2 , which could be related to possible use as a 'sleeping zone', following ethno-archaeological criteria such as the existence of a heat source in the vicinity and the protection of the rock shelter wall (Binford 1982;Galanidou 2000;Vallverdú et al 2010). In any case, they are sporadic, low-intensity occupations characterised by a little repetition in the use of the same space to perform successive activities across a broad space-time continuum, which facilitates the work of identifying the areas and possible events of knapping or food consumption (Marrero et al 2011, Machado et al 2013Mallol et al 2019) (Fig. 3).…”

“…This unit is therefore characterised by the overlapping of different occupational events, not very far apart in time, so that possible short time gaps appear blurred, to the point of not being recognisable in the vertical distribution of the remains. When human occupations are successive and repeated in the same space, over short time scales, sterile sedimentary units are difficult to define (Machado and Pérez 2016;Leierer et al 2019;Mallol et al 2019;Mayor et al 2020).…”

Micro-contextual identification of archaeological lipid biomarkers using resin-impregnated sediment slabs

“…Combining data from archaeological soil micromorphology and gas chromatography holds great potential for archaeological interpretation [18][19][20] . Micromorphology provides high resolution contextual data and gas chromatography provides molecular information on lipid content, particularly if coupled with isotopic ratio mass spectrometry (IRMS) for compound specific isotope analysis (CSIA) [21][22][23] .…”