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

Carolina Mallol,Alejandro Mayor,Dan Cabanes,Leopoldo Pérez,Bertila Galván,Norbert Mercier,Ángel Carrancho,Rory Connolly,Cristo Hernández,Christophe Falguères,Eslem Ben Arous,Paloma Vidal-Matutano

doi:10.1038/s41598-019-54305-9

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.

Highlights

Archaeological evidence across the European continent from the end of MIS 5 through MIS 4 suggests that the cooling effects of the latter in the northern hemisphere influenced the Neanderthal population
Here we report archaeological evidence of human occupations with anthropogenic fire and absolute dates from Abric del Pastor, a Middle Palaeolithic rock shelter site in Alcoy, Spain (Fig. 1, Supplementary Fig. S1)
We report three absolute dates for Stratigraphic Unit IV: (1) an ESR/U-series date of 48 ± 5 for Stratigraphic Subunit IVb, (2) an Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) date of 63 ± 5 for Stratigraphic Subunit IVd, and (3) an ESR/U-series date of 62 + 10/−9 ka for Stratigraphic Subunit VI (Fig. 2; Table 1)

Summary

Introduction

Archaeological evidence across the European continent from the end of MIS 5 through MIS 4 suggests that the cooling effects of the latter in the northern hemisphere influenced the Neanderthal population. Relatively few site-specific records exist for MIS 4 in the peninsula This potentially hampers our understanding of the local environmental settings in which MIS 4 Neanderthal occupations occurred, as we depend on regional proxy data with coarse resolution. The Iberian Peninsula is characterised by considerable climatic diversity in which mountainous topography and Atlantic and Mediterranean effects cause local environmental conditions to vary significantly even across relatively short distances[20]. Palynological data from Bolomor Cave in Valencia points to the existence of a glacial refugium during MIS 6, with closed forests and high plant diversity[9] This evidence could predict similar conditions for MIS 4 in the region and hints at a mosaic scenario for the Iberian Peninsula with different econiches shaped by local geographic factors. The lithics from various Iberian MIS 4 sites reflect settlement patterns involving small territories, as informed by short-distance raw material procurement[27,28,29,30,31] and recurrent occupation of sites[32]

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Conclusion