Journal
QUATERNARY SCIENCE REVIEWS
Volume 28, Issue 9-10, Pages 830-839Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.quascirev.2008.11.014
Keywords
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Funding
- Arts and Humanities Research Council [RG/AN1604/APN12435]
- Natural Environment Research Council [NRCF010002] Funding Source: researchfish
- NERC [NRCF010002] Funding Source: UKRI
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A research programme has been set up at Higueral de Valleja Cave in southern Spain to investigate the late survival and eventual extinction of the southern Iberian Neanderthals and the arrival of modern humans. Of key interest in the first phase of research was to understand the depositional environment in the entrance chamber of the cave and to establish whether palaeoenvironmental and dating samples could be retrieved from the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic sequences. The outcome is a series of OSL, TL and radiocarbon dates showing that the cave was occupied by Neanderthal populations in Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3, if not earlier, and by modern human Solutrean populations during the last glacial maximum. Cave sediments provisionally indicate that the lower Middle Palaeolithic sequence (X-VIII) formed in warm and humid environments and the upper sequence (VIII-V) formed when the climate was cooler and drier. The presence of long grass phytoliths and of the small mammals Microtus duo-decimcostatus, Microtus brecciensis and Apodemus sylvaticus in the upper sequence indicates that a range of habitat types persisted near the cave including grassland, scrubby vegetation, patchy tree cover and ponds. This raises the possibility that environmental factors were key factors in the late survival of Neanderthal populations at the cave. Crown Copyright (C) 2008 Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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