Abstract
ABSTRACTEl Mirón is an important archaeological cave site in Cantabria (Spain) with a stratigraphy covering the late Middle Paleolithic to the Modern Period. The Magdalenian levels are especially rich in artifacts, faunal remains, and features, and included the burial of an adult female (“the Red Lady”), as well as other scattered human remains, while the Neolithic levels contained the oldest combined evidence of ceramics, domesticated grain and livestock in the region. However, in the absence of diagnostic artifacts in many levels that would always provide a traditional cultural chronology, radiocarbon dating has been essential in understanding the temporal framework for human activity at the site. Over the duration of more than two decades, the El Mirón Project has therefore obtained 93 radiocarbon dates, which cover the entire stratigraphic record as found in several different excavation areas. In light of the considerable methodological advances that radiocarbon dating has seen since 1996 we aim to evaluate the reliability of the published 14C record for El Mirón Cave, and to improve the accuracy of the radiocarbon based chronostratigraphy through Bayesian modeling. The results shed light on which dates may be used for future research and where dating discrepancies reflect taphonomic processes, thereby advancing intra-site and regional archaeological comparisons.
Highlights
El Miron Cave in Cantabrian Spain is a deeply stratified archaeological site covering periods from the Middle Paleolithic to the Modern Period
It adds a degree of certainly to our attempts to correlate among the different, only partially connected excavation areas in the vestibule: front (OV), middle (MV), rear (VR) and Burial area, confirming especially the identity of a major, long-term set of extraordinarily rich, multi-function occupations of the cave during the Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian. These occupations, marked by such temporally and regionally distinctive artifacts as striation engraved red deer hind images on red deer scapulae, abundant square-section antler points and so-called nucleiform scrapers, formed a thick palimpsest horizon throughout the vestibule, with abundant hearths, pits, fire-cracked rocks, ocher and extraordinarily rich assemblages of debris and finished osseous and lithic artifacts and faunal remains dominated by red deer and ibex and characterized by dark “chocolate” brown-blackish brown color: levels 17–15, 312, 505–503.1 and 116–109. This horizon once extended up the present colluvial-alluvial slope before it was removed from that area along with the post-Paleolithic levels at the vestibule rear, presumably by shepherds who stabled their livestock in this area before excavations began
Care is needed when working with dates from levels 11/11.1, 116, 110, and 108–104, as well as dates from the excavation areas inner cave (IC) and the burial
Summary
El Miron Cave in Cantabrian Spain is a deeply stratified archaeological site covering periods from the Middle Paleolithic to the Modern Period. After more than two decades of archaeological and chronological research, critical questions regarding inter-area correlations, and the reliability of the published radiocarbon record remained. The aims were (1) to model the most likely radiocarbon age ranges for the many Paleolithic and postPaleolithic archaeological strata, and (2) to propose chronological correlations among levels excavated in several different areas within the cave between 1996–2013. The vestibule excavations consisted of an outer area (“Cabin”: 9.25 m2) and a rear area (“Corral”: maximally 12.5 m2) connected by a 9-m-long × 0.5-1-m-wide Mid-Vestibule Trench, plus a contiguous 4 m2 area in the SE corner of the Downloaded from https://www.cambridge.org/core.
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