Central Iberia around the Last Glacial Maximum

Abstract

The currently most widely accepted model of population dynamics in Southwest Europe during the Last Glacial Maximum depicts the Iberian Peninsula as a human refugium. However, this refugium was generally thought to be limited to the coastal areas of Iberia, while the interior lands of the Spanish plateau were explicitly excluded as areas of significant human settlement. According to what we have termed the “crossing-area model,” these inner territories supposedly had no Solutrean settlements, only ephemeral visits corresponding to the passage of hunter-gatherers en route between the more favored coastal areas. In this paper we test the validity of this model in light of new data from several sites in Central Iberia, namely from the Madrid Basin and the southeastern foothills of the Central System mountain range. We conclude that the crossing-area model does not explain the current data and therefore should be reassessed. Consequently, we propose to open up new avenues of research aimed at approaching the ...