The Holocene archaeological research around Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain) and its projection in a GIS geospatial database

Abstract

Abstract In recent decades, the area around Sierra de Atapuerca has been the focus of many archaeological excavations and surveys under research projects and also management or rescue archaeology. From 1999 to 2007, one such project analysed the evolution of prehistoric settlement around Sierra de Atapuerca during the Holocene. The fieldwork was based on ten archaeological surveys, eight of them using a full-coverage intensive systematic method in a 314 km 2 area (10 km radius around Mayor Cave, Sierra de Atapuerca), and two intensive systematic surveys of the sites. This paper presents a thorough, up-to-date cartography of every Holocene archaeological site in this area as at 2014: surveyed sites, excavated sites, caves and megalithic structures. We also discuss GIS mapping techniques and geoespatial databases applied to archaeological surveys, we evaluate the megalithic structures and the settlements excavated at other digs, and we assess the relevance and contributions of each archaeological operation. The results of our research project have proven highly successful, with an overall Holocene spatial distribution of more than 200 archaeological sites from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age: caves, open air sites and megalithic structures. These findings, combined with the GIS results, show that the area around Sierra de Atapuerca may be one of the best potential sources for deeper knowledge of Late Prehistory on the Northern Iberian Plateau.