Temporal frameworks to approach human behavior concealed in Middle Palaeolithic palimpsests: A high-resolution example from El Salt Stratigraphic Unit X (Alicante, Spain)

Abstract

The lack of accurate temporal indicators among the remains, requiring archaeologists to infer human behavior from archaeological palimpsests, represents a key methodological problem. The main effect of this problem is the inability to delimit analytical units from which to interpret behavior using the most suitable time-scales (i.e. temporal scales as close as possible to “ethnographic time”). To address this problem, we present results from an empirical case of palimpsest dissection at the Middle Palaeolithic site of El Salt, Spain. First, two potentially stratigraphically correlated anthropogenic assemblages were isolated within Stratigraphic Unit X (Archaeostratigraphic Units 4.1 and 4e) using archaeostratigraphic methods. Then, taking these records as basic analytical units, we explored their possible chrono-stratigraphic association and their internal temporal and behavioral significance through the spatial study of raw material units (RMU) and the zooarchaeological record. The faunal assemblages analyzed exhibited a high level of complementarity, which supports the temporal correlation. Furthermore, our results have revealed general behavioral trends and single time-averaged human activities, suggesting that the archaeostratigraphic units analyzed were formed by recurrent ephemeral occupations. The resulting high-resolution behavioral data also represent a significant tool for future comparative studies focusing on unraveling the relationship between the formation lengths of archaeological records and the “ethnographic” time-scale in which past human behaviors were framed.