Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Murcia, Spain): A late Early Pleistocene hominin site with an “Acheulo-Levalloiso-Mousteroid” Palaeolithic assemblage

Abstract

At Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar biostratigraphy and palaeomagnetism indicate a time in the late Early Pleistocene (i.e. somewhat before the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary of 780,000 a, 0.78 Ma), for the entire 5 m thick sedimentary fill excavated in the rock-shelter, from which there are hominin teeth (cf. Homo heidelbergensis), a rich palaeontological and palaeopalynological record demonstrating warm moist environmental conditions (possibly MIS 21), a fundamentally homogeneous artifact assemblage throughout the sedimentary deposit, and evidence of fire at over 4 m depth. A brief introduction to the site and the assemblage is offered. Palaeolithic artifacts were produced by three different reduction sequences, because: (a) an “Acheulian” hand-axe was flaked bifacially on a flat limestone cobble; (b) several excavated chert flakes had been struck off small cores by recurrent flaking, with one flake showing a facetted striking platform, whilst two surface finds of small discoidal cores bear the broad central concave scar that in a “Levalloisian” prepared-core reduction sequence would correspond to centripetal removal of the final flake; and (c) abundant small artifacts (25–60 mm), mainly of chert, reflect expedient removal of small flakes or fragments from cores, by both unipolar and bipolar reduction techniques, including many keeled pieces that could be residual cores which have notches, slender spurs or beaks (“becs”), or a planoconvex (“slug”-like or “limace”) shape, all of which may be remnants of cores subjected to bipolar knapping, in addition to very small pointed and “awl”-like pieces, and several fragments and flakes with steep abrupt (“Mousteroid”) edge-retouch, and abundant knapping spalls and waste. Although the site had been interpreted conservatively in earlier publications as early Middle Pleistocene, recent palaeomagnetic findings show that the entire sedimentary fill corresponds to the late Early Pleistocene, somewhat over 780,000 a (0.78 Ma), an age which is acceptable from the standpoint of the biostratigraphical data. Among the aims of this paper are: (1) a consideration of the Palaeolithic assemblage in relation to local availability of raw materials of appropriate shapes and petrology for knapping in a palaeoenvironmental context far different from that of today; (2) consideration of the implications for human cognitive and technological evolution in the European late Early Pleistocene; and (3) a proposal that those considerations highlight practical, methodological, and theoretical drawbacks to the classical European interpretation of earlier Palaeolithic chronologies from a perspective of typological sequences.