@article{10902/32346,
year = {2023},
url = {https://hdl.handle.net/10902/32346},
abstract = {During the last glacial period, rapidly changing environments posed substantial challenges to Neanderthal populations in Europe. Southern continental regions, such as Iberia, have been proposed as important climatic "buffer" zones during glacial phases. Contextualising the climatic and ecological conditions Neanderthals faced is relevant to interpreting their resilience. However, records of the environments and ecosystems they exploited across Iberia exhibit temporal and spatial gaps in coverage. Here we provide new evidence for palaeotemper atures, vegetation structure, and prey herbivore ecology during the late Pleistocene (MIS 5-3) in northern Spain, by applying multiple stable isotope tracers (ɗ¹⁸O, ɗ¹³C, ɗ¹⁵N, ɗ³⁴S) to herbivore skeletal remains associated with Neanderthal occupations at Axlor Cave, Bizkaia. The results show little change over time and indicate stable climatic conditions and ecosystems across different occupations. Large within-layer isotopic variability in nitrogen and sulphur suggests the presence of a mosaic environment and a variety of isotopic ecotones that were exploited by Neanderthals and their prey. We implement a combination of carbonate and phosphate ɗ¹⁸O measurements to estimate palaeotemperatures using a cost-effective workflow. We show that the targeted use of phosphate ɗ¹⁸O measurements to anchor summer peak and winter trough areas enables high-precision seasonal palaeoclimatic reconstructions.},
organization = {The carbon, nitrogen and sulphur stable isotope analyses and the stable isotope analyses of bioapatite carbonates were funded as part of the ABRUPT project (HAR2017-84997-P) funded by the Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities and the SUBSILIENCE project funded by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme (grant agreement no. 818299—ERC-2018-Consolidator), both awarded to ABM-A. SP was supported by the Max Planck Society and the University of Aberdeen during the time of this pro ject, and the oxygen isotope analysis of bioapatite phosphates was funded by the Max Planck Society. Access to the archaeological collections was granted by the Museo de Arqueología de Bizkaia (Basque Government), and initial sampling for carbon and nitrogen isotope analysis was achieved by Hazel Reade funded by the FP7-PEOPLE-2012-CIG- 322112 project) and ABM-A.},
publisher = {Elsevier},
publisher = {Quaternary Research, 2023, 116, 108-132},
title = {Late Pleistocene Neanderthal exploitation of stable and mosaic ecosystems in northern Iberia shown by multi-isotope evidence},
author = {Pederzani, Sarah and Britton, Kate and Jones, Jennifer Rose and Agudo Pérez, Lucía and Geiling, Jeanne Marie and Marín Arroyo, Ana Belén},
}