RT info:eu-repo/semantics/article
T1 Low‐cost technologies in a rich ecological context: Hotel California open‐air site at Sierra de Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain
A1 Santamaría Díez, Marta
A1 Navazo Ruiz, Marta
A1 Arnold, Lee J. .
A1 Benito Calvo, Alfonso
A1 Demuro, Martina .
A1 Carbonell, Eudald
K1 Expedient technology
K1 Lithic technology
K1 Neanderthals
K1 Open‐air sites
K1 Sierra de Atapuerca
K1 Arqueología-Burgos
K1 Archaeology-Burgos
K1 Prehistoria-Burgos
K1 Prehistoric peoples
AB Hotel California is part of a network of open-air Neanderthal sites located in the Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain). In this study, we examine the technology of the lithic assemblages recovered from this site's archaeological levels 3 to 7, which are characterised by the use of local raw materials, non-hierarchical centripetal exploitation systems, systematic production of flakes and few retouched items. This type of expedient technology is repeated throughout the entire sequence, which spans Marine Isotope Stages (MIS) 3 to 4. Through a comparison with the technocomplexes and occupation histories of surrounding sites – including a re-evaluation of the published chronology for the nearby site of Fuente Mudarra, which is now dated exclusively to MIS 5 – we examine whether the detected pattern is applicable to the rest of the Atapuerca Mousterian record and if this expedient behaviour has equivalents in other sites in the region. Our findings show that the lithic procurement, exploitation and configuration strategies employed at the Sierra de Atapuerca open-air sites were constant over broad time periods spanning MIS 5 to 3, in contrast to the technological sequences observed at other nearby sites on the Northern Iberian Plateau. The recurrent settlement of these open-air Neanderthal sites over tens of thousands of years and the consistent use of expedient technologies during different occupation periods is likely attributable to the rich ecological context of the Sierra de Atapuerca environs.
PB Wiley
SN 0267-8179
YR 2023
FD 2023-07
LK http://hdl.handle.net/10259/7865
UL http://hdl.handle.net/10259/7865
LA eng
NO This work was funded by the Spanish Ministry projects CGL2012-38434-C03-02, CGL2015-65387-C3-3-P and PGC2018-093925-B-C31. The field excavation work was funded by the Junta de Castilla y León and Fundación Atapuerca. Marta Santamaría has a predoctoral fellowship from the University of Burgos. Martina Demuro is supported by Australian Research Council Future Fellowship grant FT200100816. The excavation team has made this research possible. We would like to give special thanks to Hector de la Fuente and Pedro Alonso, colleagues of the Prehistory Laboratory of the UBU, for their constant support.
DS Repositorio Institucional de la Universidad de Burgos
RD 11-may-2024