Human Ecodynamics in the Late Upper Pleistocene of Northern Spain: An Archeozoological Study of Ungulate Remains from the Lower Magdalenian and other Periods in El Mirón Cave (Cantabria)

Abstract

ABSTRACT: In this dissertation, changes in human economic strategies and their relationship to climate, demography, and social factors are evaluated based on a throughout archeozoological analysis of the macro-mammal assemblages from El Mirón Cave (Ramales de la Victoria, Cantabria, Spain) dating between 48,000, and 14,500 uncal. BP. Dominated by the ungulates red deer and Spanish ibex, the more than 200,000 faunal remains analyzed with classic and latest methods allow studying the foraging economic behavior in its contexts. This investigation emphasizes the local environmental conditions (by stable isotopes on ungulate teeth, phytoliths in ungulate dental calculus and chemical bone surface staining) and resource exploitation strategies (by archeozoological and taphonomic means to reveal diet breadth and butchering processes) through time and space. Further taphonomic-spatial studies provide the specific sequences of chaînes opératoires of animal exploitation, demonstrating multifaceted alterations of economic components by the inhabitants of the El Mirón Cave. The El Mirón results combined with a meta-analysis of published late Middle and Upper Paleolithic (mainly the Magdalenian period) faunal studies from the Cantabrian region provides a substantial corpus of detailed archeozoological data from one of the most important Stone Age sites, excavated with modern methods, in this region in recent decades.