Programmes > Par auteur > García-Solano José Antonio

The significance of subtlety: contrasting raw material use at the Oldowan sites of Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Andalusia, Spain)

Deborah Barsky1, 2, Stefania Titton1, 2, Juan Manuel Jiménez-Arenas3, Francisco Martínez-Sevilla4, Isidro Toro-Moyano5

1 Institut Català de Paleoecologia Humana i Evolució Social, c/Marcelli Domingo s/n, Campus Sesceladis URV, Edifici W3, 43007, Tarragona, Spain.

2 Area de Prehistoria, Universitat Rovira i Virgili (URV), Avinguda de Catalunya 35, 43002 Tarragona, Spain.

3 University of Granada, Department of Prehistory and Archaeology, Campus Universitario de Cartuja C.P. 18071 Granada, Spain.

4 University College London, Institute of Archaeology, Gordon Square 31-34 London WC1H0PY Great Britain.

5 Museo Arqueológico de Granada, Carrera del Darro 41-43, 18010 Granada, Spain

Barranco León and Fuente Nueva 3 (Orce, Andalusia, Spain) are major archeological sites corresponding to the Western European Oldowan. Situated in southern Spain's Guadix-Baza depression, these sites are among the most numerically rich lithic and faunal records providing information about the earliest hominins outside of Africa (1,4-1,3 Ma, respectively). Ongoing excavations and inter-disciplinary research efforts allow to discern contrasting raw material procurement and exploitation patterns used by the hominins present at both of these occurrences; in spite of their spatial and temporal proximity. This new data allows us to discern subtle, landscape-related behavioral differences in the treatment of limestone and flint materials between the two sites. The context of the sites: on the shores of a paleo saline lake with in-feeding thermal fresh water sources, and an abundance of other large mammals including coompetitive carnivores, underline questions of expedience as an influence on techno-morphology in these early stone toolkits. We analyze these themes, accenting updated information from these and other key European late Early Pleistocene sites.