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Cueva Negra is 10 km south of Caravaca de la Cruz, lying at 740 m a.s.l. (metres above sea level) and 40 m above the R. Quípar where it flows northwards out of a gorge (“Estrecho”) below the hamlet of La Encarnación (Fig.1). The large rock-shelter contains a noteworthy depth of Pleistocene sediments cursorily explored in 1981 (Martínez-Andreu et al., 1989). It lies in Upper Miocene (Tortonian) sedimentary “biocalcarenite”¹ rock on the right-hand side of the narrow gorge through which the R. Quípar Gorge descends before joining the R. Segura, which reaches the Mediterranean Sea 110 km east of the site that nevertheless is but 75 km north of the southern Murcian coast. Systematic excavation began in 1990 and 25 field seasons have taken place. For some years neither the chronology nor the complexity of the Pleistocene geology were understood correctly. Inaccuracies and mistaken interpretations in earlier publications were corrected in the 2013 revision (Walker et al., 2013) that supersedes them all, and significant aspects of it are summarized here (earlier publications cited here are preceded by ! indicating they contain some unreliable information, usually a chronological attribution that is too young, sometimes incorrect faunal assignation, or occasionally a geological error).  

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Fig. 1: Cueva Negra and its surroundings

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The 5-m-deep Pleistocene sedimentary fill (Fig.2) is assigned by magnetostratigraphy² to the Matuyama magnetochron² >0.78 Ma (Scott and Gibert, 2009). Optically-stimulated sediment luminescence³ implies >0.5 Ma and mammalian biochronology indicates >0.7<1 Ma (Walker et al., 2013): e.g., extinct forms of Arvicolid rodents – i.e. voles, field-mice, water-rats, etc. – which became extinct around 0.7 Ma, such as Mimomys savini, Microtus (Iberomys/Terricola/Pitymys) huescarensis huescarensis, Pliomys episcopalism, Allophaiomys (Microtus/Euphaiomys) cf. chalinei, Stenocranius (Microtus) gregaloides; as well as extinct large mammals, among them the extinct Cervids Megaloceros aff. savini (a giant deer) and Dama cf. nestii vallonnetensis (an ancestral form of fallow deer); the extinct Rhinocerotid (i.e. rhino) Stephanorhinus cf. etruscus; the Equid Equus altidens (an extinct horse), etc.: all of them are well-known Pleistocene time-markers of mammalian evolution in western Europe. Sediment micromorphology⁴ shows the fill represents near-horizontal, gradual, intermittent fluviatile accumulation⁴ (Angelucci et al., 2013) with no significant horizontal or vertical discontinuities (pace Jiménez-Arias et al., 2011). Mammals, birds (including waterfowl), reptiles and amphibians corroborate pollen (! Carrión et al., 2003) typical of mild (MIS-21?⁵), damp, fluvio-lacustrine⁴ environments. Anne Eastham identified more than 60 bird species (! Walker et al., 1998) implying nearby biotopes⁶ of (1) lakes and rivers with temperate woodland, (2) open mixed woodland, (3) open grassland and heath, and (4) craggy mountainsides. That suggests the site was frequented owing to its well-favoured position in its surroundings with noteworthy biodiversity, though it may have been taken over by birds whenever flooding required mammals to abandon the cave, perhaps seasonally.

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Fig. 2: Cueva Negra Plan and sections

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Cueva Negra “pre-Neanderthal” (Homo cf. heidelbergensis) teeth (Fig.3) give several measurements (Table 1) out with modern ranges; e.g. large antero-posterior measurement at the neck, or cervix, between crown and root (cervical vestibulo- or bucco-lingual dimension), typical in Neanderthals and archaic humans and often interpreted as a “buttressing” adaptation to using front teeth as a vise. Extreme tooth wear (attrition) of Cueva Negra front teeth, exposing dentine and the pulp- or root canal (rendering lingual crown height unreliable and uninformative) is also typical of Neanderthals and archaic humans, perhaps caused by using front teeth as a vise; in modern humans tooth wear and exposure of dentine occurs mostly on crowns of back teeth, only rarely on front teeth. One incisor tooth crown has a “shovel” form (a broad vertical scoop) on its internal (lingual) surface; “shoveling” is common on Neanderthal incisors. A canine tooth with occlusal attrition that exposed the pulp canal has a root that is much longer than in modern humans though comparable in length with some Neanderthal canines (e.g. from Grotte d’Hortus).

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Fig. 3: Cueva Negra with hand-axe and teeth

        Table 1

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The most important findings at Cueva Negra concern human activity. Two aspects are of especial interest. First, undoubted evidence of fire has been uncovered (Fig.4), sealed within a 4.5 m-deep layer of sediment 5 m back from the present entrance, perhaps still further back 0.8 Ma if rock overhanging the entrance has undergone erosion since then. Thin-section micromorphology suggests combustion of sediment (Angelucci et al., 2013) and recent geochemical analysis supports that. Since 2011 excavation has yielded both thermally-altered, lustreless chert, with pot-lid fractures and conjoined splintering caused by thermal shock to both nodules and artificially-struck flakes, and also charred burnt animal bone and white calcined fragments showing conjoined lengthwise long-bone spalling typical of circumferential shrinkage after thermal volatilization of organic components (Walker et al., 2013). Recent taphonomical analysis and electron microscopy of bone fragments attribute discolouration to burning, not to post-depositional mineral staining, and both Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy and electron spin resonance analysis of chert and bone imply firing temperatures ca. 550ºC (Walker et al., in preparation).

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Fig. 4: Cueva Negra deep layer with thermally altered remains

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A fire-place is not a hearth. The Cueva Negra humans could have brought glowing brands left by a forest fire into the cave to establish and tend a fire where rain or wind would not put it out. They may well have been less afraid of fire outside than other animals they saw fleeing from it (which could have led them to play with fire in order to drive animals towards natural death-traps, such as swamps, enabling dismemberment and roasting). This does not mean they could reproduce or control fire; there is a dearth of archaeological evidence for hearths or fire-pits before 0.5 Ma.

Nevertheless, fire at ca. 0.8 Ma supported hominin cognitive versatility, techno-manual dexterity, and palaeoeconomic extractive behaviour in long-vanished Western European palaeoecological and palaeobiogeographical contexts. Cueva Negra exemplifies those aspects; Palaeolithic finds imply resources were exploited as far away as 40 km downstream and 30 km upstream from the site (Zack et al., 2013). That range is unsurprising given that ≥1.3 Ma early humans had begun migrating into Western Europe from northern Africa or western Asia, and therefore they could not have been congenital stick-in-the-muds even though, plausibly, their preferred habitats were localities with abundant biodiversity at hand (cf. ! Walker et al., 2006).  

The excavated Palaeolithic assemblage includes a bifacially-flaked “Acheulian” limestone hand-axe, though it mostly consists of small chert, limestone or quartzite artifacts (<60 mm long), knapped on site, often by bipolar reduction or repetitive centripetal flaking of small discoidal (“Levallois”) cores, and often showing marginal retouch that is mainly steep-angle (>50º) and sometimes abrupt (“Mousteroid”), and very occasionally invasive or semi-invasive low-angle (<30º)  (from the hand-axe to very small chert flakes <30 mm long). Serrated, notched or denticulate edges occur, and pieces bearing one or two large notches are common. Some flakes and several flattish or laminar subrectangular fragments were knapped to give steep abrupt (“Mousteroid”) edge-retouch (Fig.5). Steep retouch on a piece of flattish laminar chert can transform its perpendicular edge to give an acute angle useful for cutting or scraping. It is plausible to see that as being very different indeed from abrupt retouch of “scrapers” in most Mousterian assemblages where steep retouch applied to thin feathered flakes could spare them from accidental breakage by snapping during use or may have been applied to resharpen a cutting tool. Well-formed feathered flakes with striking platforms and bulbs of percussion are fairly uncommon at Cueva Negra, whereas small fragments of laminar chert abound. Many of the small artifacts seem to have much in common with those from the penecontemporaneous Catalan site of Vallparadís (Martínez et al., 2010) and from the Italian site of Isernia La Pineta, rather than with assemblages ≥1 Ma from Atapuerca and Orce.

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Fig. 5: Cueva Negra Palaeolithic artifacts

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From a descriptive viewpoint of stone-knapping techniques the assemblage may be called “Acheulo-Levalloiso-Mousteroid” (! Walker et al., 2006; Walker et al., 2013; Zack et al., 2013); this descriptive techno-methodological approach can be uncoupled, viewed epistemologically, from prescriptive ontological typologies influenced by relative chronological inferences drawn tautologically from conjectural “culture history” and pseudo-evolutionary conjectures about Palaeolithic technology.

           Once freed from the dead hand of traditional perspectives, other aspects of the assemblage come to the fore. Several small retouched artifacts seem to fall into overlapping groups, in contrast to some other Spanish Early Pleistocene assemblages that have been called “Oldowan” due to perceived similarity to African ones; the term is inappropriate at Cueva Negra because, unlike typically Oldowan artifacts in Africa, nearly all those excavated at Cueva Negra are <60 mm in size. Steep retouch is seen on many pointed pieces; some are flattish pieces and could be regarded as fine points, “awls”, or “perforators”, whereas others resemble thick “Tayac points” described often in Middle and early Late Pleistocene European assemblages. Pointed artifacts include “becs”, small chunks of chert from each of which there projects incongruously a delicate elongated tiny spur, or “beak” (fancifully bringing to mind a small bird head with its beak). There are also many steeply-keeled fragments; some resemble steep scrapers on short stumpy cores, whereas others, knapped into elongated keeled planoconvex shapes resembling garden slugs (“limaces”) may be called “proto-limaces”. Beaks and slugs could be interpreted as convergent steep scrapers, or where both ends are pointed they could be envisaged as thick double points. However, researchers at 0.7 Ma Isernia La Pineta argue that its beaks and slugs are what were left behind after their reduction by bipolar knapping to remove extremely small flakes used as unretouched tools, backing their argument up with microscopical use-wear analysis and experimental knapping (Crovetto, 1994; Crovetto et al., 1994; Peretto, 1994; Peretto et al., 2004).

Flakes produced by bipolar knapping occur at Cueva Negra, though they are yet to be quantified because quantification of bipolar elements depends on whether carinated pieces with notches, spurs (beaks) and planoconvex double-ended slug-shaped pieces, were outcomes, first and foremost, of bipolar core-reduction to remove usable flakes, or whether, instead, they were primarily fashioned intentionally for use as implements themselves. The two possibilities need not be mutually exclusive because comparable pieces have been interpreted as implements, sometimes supported by microscopical use-wear analysis; an extensive literature exists with references to “limaces”, “becs” and “microperforators” from Pleistocene and Holocene lithic assemblages in Europe, Africa, and North and South America.

         Most Cueva Negra artifacts are “expedient”, frequently of “informal” shape, implying “opportunistic” or “eclectic” technological behaviour. They bring to mind the different blades of a Swiss knife. It is perhaps unsurprising that retouch is seen as often on stone fragments as on well-made flakes struck from prepared discoidal cores by recurrent repetitive centripetal flaking, given that at 0.8 Ma secant-plane control of knapping was in its infancy worldwide. It should be borne in mind that such cores are known from 1.3 Ma in Africa (de la Torre et al., 2004) where hand-axes have even greater antiquity (1.7 Ma) and that both of these involved bifacial flaking albeit with different formal secant-plane implications (asymmetrical and symmetrical, respectively), though more eclectic informal (“Oldowan”) tool-making continued alongside them. Extraction of regular flakes by recurrent repetitive centripetal flaking of prepared discoidal cores is demanding in both cognitive and technical terms (Coolidge and Wynn, 2005); the putative flakes are, as it were, “hidden” from view (like the yolk inside a hen’s egg, so to speak), and “unimaginable” simply from looking at the external shape of the stone before the reduction sequence begins. Evidence at Cueva Negra of both bifacial hand-axe production and recurrent repetitive centripetal flaking of prepared discoidal cores, together with a diverse range of small artifacts, implies manual dexterity, technical aptitude and cognitive versatility.  

        This raises the question of how those who frequented Cueva Negra 0.8 Ma ago perceived and exploited their surroundings, particularly where they obtained raw materials for stone tools. Two different matters are relevant. First, how far were the different possibilities of different rocks perceived? Secondly, were outcrops available then that nowadays afford suitable stone?

         The hand–axe shows 30 fresh bifacial extractions on a flattish limestone cobble with some cortex still present and a similar cobble had 15 unifacial fresh extractions along one side. Both probably were obtained from fluvio-lacustrine gravels, though X-ray diffraction and petrography indicate that their grey-blue micritic limestone (94% calcite; 6% quartz) originated in Lower Jurassic (Lias) rocks (! Walker et al., 2006). An unworked cobble from Cueva Negra is a dismicrite containing 10% quartz, radiolarian fragments, and filamentous planctonic fragments, characteristic of Middle Jurassic (Dogger) strata. Lower and Middle Jurassic beds are exposed in mountainsides upstream from the site. Another unworked limestone cobble from the site lacks quartz, being oolitic sparite (oosparite). Two limestone cobbles from a small conglomerate outcrop 0.8 km east of the site also lack quartz, one being composed of cryptocrystalline limestone pellets of organic faecal origin, the other of sparite cement with microscopical fossils.

The aforementioned conglomerate outcrop is an Upper Miocene (Tortonian) marine conglomerate, containing complete Ostreid and Pectinid sea-shell fossils (i.e. oysters and scallops), that formed as an inshore deposit of Tethys Sea¹ of cobbles and stones eroded out of the nearby mountainside and later cemented by CaC0₃ when intense Upper Pliocene and Early Pleistocene neotectonic activity lifted up the mountains and their erstwhile sea-shore to its present height of 750 m a.s.l. (the Tortonian strata dip strongly to the SW and 0.8 km away lie at 730 m a.s.l. below Cueva Negra; the steep dip was not taken into account in some early publications, leading to mistaken interpretations). The cemented cobbles and stones are of limestone, chert and quartzite; several were taken at Cueva Negra and at the outcrop Palaeolithic artifacts have been picked up similar to those of the rock-shelter, including a small prepared discoidal chert core. The chert raw material includes eroded frangible tabular nodules derived from chert blocks or slabs of sub-parallele-piped shape. They are best described as “fissible” (Stein, 1981: 537) because hammering on them often fails to elicit conchoidal fractures or produce feathered flakes with well-developed convex bulbs of percussion. If hammering does not simply shatter the chert blocks into very small chips and fragments, it may split them open along fissible flat planes defined by internal structure or impurities, and produce flattish sub-rectangular laminar fragments available for modifying as tools.

Loose chert cobbles and blocks (some upto 0.3 m across weighing 5 kg) abound <5 km south of Cueva Negra from 770 up to 890 m a.s.l. on the flanks of mountains from whose crags of Jurassic limestone chert was eroded. Massive continental lateral erosion took place in the Upper Pleistocene and initial Pleistocene, leaving high-altitude vestiges of an erstwhile vast gravel spread 100-120 m thick (“raña”; “glacis”) containing conglomerate bands, the base of which lies ca. 45 m above the river today (Walker et al., 2013; Zack et al., 2013). Later on, much of that ancient gravel was displaced both laterally and longitudinally and redeposited, owing to ongoing Early Pleistocene erosion induced by falling base level as uplift continued. The process gave rise, in two or perhaps three depositional cycles, to horizontally-bedded outcrops of gravels and fluvio-lacustrine conglomerate that abound at relative heights of 5-25 m above the river today. These outcrops often include noteworthy fossil vestiges of local lakes. The matter is complicated by unequal uplift of the sides of the active longitudinal shear fault along which the R. Quípar runs (unequal uplift saved the Cueva Negra sediments from riverine erosion), and by unequal spatiotemporal activity of those faults normal to it which probably determined development or drainage of hanging lakes upstream in the upper Quípar valley (where it is called the Rambla de Tarragoya). In short, there is a wealth of possible secondary or even tertiary sources of eroded Jurassic chert, but just which were available to Cueva Negra chert-knappers called out for forensic research.

There are also a few small primary chert outcrops. One is of radiolarite ca. 40 km downstream from the rock-shelter where a radiolarite scraper was found in 2013. Another is of light-brown tabular chert at Río Caramel, a tributary of the R. Guadalentín that joins the R. Segura near Murcia; the upper Quípar is separated by a watershed from the Guadalentín river system. It has not been possible yet to determine whether light-brown chert at Cueva Negra came from the outcrop. At high altitude on the watershed itself there is a very small outcrop of biogenic chert that probably formed in a freshwater Pliocene lake, which has the unusual frondose cactus-like form not unlike that of East African Lake Magadi flint; at least one flake at Cueva Negra may well have come from the outcrop. Primary chert outcrops seem not to have been exploited intensively.  

Most Cueva Negra chert originated in Jurassic rock strata, albeit obtained from secondary or even tertiary gravel or conglomerate accumulations. Which ones? Petrographically the cherts look much alike. Might help come from chemical finger-printing of chert? Thanks to collaboration with the University of Arizona help came from the laser-ablation inductively-coupled plasma mass-spectrometry of trace elements present in several of the Earth’s crustal rocks (Sc, V, Cr, Co, Zn, Ga, Ge, Rb, Sr, Y, Zr, Nb, Cs, Ba, La, Ce, Pr, Nd, Sm). Chert samples were taken from a number of outcrops for comparison with chert from Cueva Negra (Zack et al., 2013).

Multivariate factorial analysis of the data show most chert fragments analyzed from Cueva Negra resemble chert sampled at the Tortonian conglomerate 0.8 km to the east (Fig.6). A few Cueva Negra fragments more closely resemble samples from fluvio-lacustrine gravel outcrops upstream in the Rambla de Tarragoya as far as the headwaters of the valley (where we even picked up a “proto-limace”) ca. 25 km south of the site. Plausibly, variation in trace-element composition cherts that had formed at separate localities or times in the Jurassic is reflected in compositional differences between outcrops of gravels that received chert nodules eroded from the mountainsides nearest by. Some of those cherts were taken to Cueva Negra. Trace-element characterization indicates how far humans ranged.

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Fig. 6: Upper Quipar Valley Cueva Negra CNERQ and chart outcrops sampled

Research at Cueva Negra throws new light, including fire-light, on the cognitive versatility, manual dexterity and technical aptitude of early humans ca. 0.8 Ma in S.E. Spain. They exploited their surroundings in a competent fashion that implies precise knowledge and accurate awareness of what was available for survival. Research continues both in the field and laboratory at this intriguing late Early Pleistocene site.          

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Acknowledgements:

We thank all research collaborators named in the text or references as well as palaeontologists Drs. A. Ruiz Bustos, J. van der Made, X. Murélaga Beirucua and archaeologists Drs. D.A. Roe and I. Martín-Lerma for their kind help.

Footnotes:

1. This biocalcarenite rock is an Upper Miocene (Tortonian) sedimentary rock that formed between 11 and 7.5 million years ago in the bed of the vast Tethys Sea that extended from the Atlantic Ocean to the Persian Gulf (the Mediterranean Sea is all that remains of it). The rock is called biocalcarenite because it contains sand-size grains and fragments of sea-shells and coral, all cemented by calcium carbonate. It forms the floor, walls, and roof of Cueva Nega though these lack the cobbles and large pebbles that are found in more deeply lying, slightly older, Tortonian strata at a conglomerate outcrop 0.8 km E of the cave which was exploited by its Palaeolithic occupants who took cobbles to the cave and broke them open to knap the chert that some of them contained.

2. Magnetostratigraphy is the use of “geomagnetic reversals” to correlate rock strata that have been dated accurately by other means at some places. It relies on palaeomagnetic signatures of remanent magnetism in rocks, which may be based on metals (such as iron) in volcanic rocks, or on the orientation of magnetic minerals in grains in sedimentary deposits, which was the basis for the palaeomagnetic research into the Cueva Negra Pleistocene sediments. Some history is in order here. In 1906 the French geophysicist Bernard Brunhes drew attention to the phenomenon we call “geomagnetic reversal”, after finding that an ancient volcanic rock was magnetized in the opposite direction to the Earth’s present-day magnetic field. For that to have happened, he inferred that the magnetic North Pole would have to have been near to what we regard as the magnetic South Pole today, implying that our planet’s magnetic field had undergone a reversal. In 1929 the Japanese geophysicist Motonori Matuyama published findings that began to show that different reversals of the direction (“polarity”) of the Earth’s magnetic field characterize different parts of the geological stratigraphical record, and in particular that the part which we nowadays regard as the Early Pleistocene (formerly, Lower Pleistocene) was characterized by a reversal of the polarity of our planet’s magnetic field. We now know that this reversal lasted from 2.588 to 0.78 Ma: that period is called the Matuyama reverse polarity chron and it was followed by the Brunhes normal polarity chron from 0.78 Ma to the present day; the 0.78 Ma reversal is called the Matuyama-Brunhes boundary. The Matuyama chron was interrupted by a few normal polarity episodes (two important ones are named after geological beds at Olduvai and Jaramillo). The Gauss normal polarity chron mainly characterized the Upper Pliocene between 3.59 and 2.588 Ma (3.6-2.6 Ma for most intents and purposes). A few hundred reversals now are known to have taken place during the history of our planet. All of the Cueva Negra sediment corresponds to the end of the Matuyama chron, according to the results of a study of the palaeomagnetism of 11 samples taken from top to bottom of the 5 m depth of its sedimentary fill and a further 2 taken in the escarpment below the cave mouth where sediment is exposed by erosion.

3. Optically-stimulated luminscence (OSL) dating of sediment grains attempts to estimate the time elapsed since the grains were last exposed to heat (e.g. sunlight) that destabilized the chemical make-up of minerals (e.g. quartz), which over time, at a known rate, recovers part of the stability that was disturbed. If several mineral grains are used for OSL, there is a risk that some may have been exposed to light or heat at later times than others were, thereby underestimating the age of a sedimentary deposit, and this problem may have affected the OSL dates obtained on multiple-grain samples analyzed at Oxford University by Dr. Jean-Luc Schwenninger, who has made three visits to sample Cueva Negra sediments, which suggested an age of 0.3-0.4 Ma when the less reliable multiple-grain method was applied, and more recently an age of at least 0.5 Ma using single-grain analysis (Schwenninger, personal communication). Unfortunately, the time and cost involved in undertaking accelerator mass-spectrometry when single grains are used, and the obvious need to analyze several of these independently, hinder widespread application of this approach. The method is related to that of thermoluminescence, TL, that has been used to date pottery and even burnt flint for the past fifty years, often with considerable success. Dr. Schwenninger is trying to apply it to burnt chert from Cueva Negra. Put crudely, if the amount of recovery towards stability can be determined, and if also we have a fair idea of what the original firing temperature was likely to have been, then by refiring in the laboratory at that temperature a handmade prehistoric potsherd, the full degree of that ancient destabilization of physicochemical constituents of atoms in clay molecules can be reproduced, and hence, from the amount of energy we have applied in order to do so, it is possible to estimate how much time had elapsed since the original firing. Much is known about the effect on different clays caused by varying the temeprature of the potter’s kiln. The matter gets far more complicated, alas, where chert or flint underwent burning in a bonfire of unknown heat. Luckily, at Cueva Negra the burnt chert comes from a deeply-lying lens of burnt sediment containing white burnt animal bones that had undergone calcination (i.e. all organic matter in them had been burnt out), which implies heating at high temperature according to knowledge from Forensic Biology. A high temperature implies humans were tending fire in the cave, because, so far inside the cave, it is unlikely a passing bush fire could have produced it. Research into the temperature, using the method of Fourier Transform infrared spectrometry (FTIRS) on the calcined bone, is being undertaken now, with promising initial results, by geoarchaeologist Dr. Francesco Berna at Simon Fraser University, and also by Dr. Anne Skinner using electron spin resonance at Williams College at Williamstown. Their preliminary findings point to a temperature of around 550ºC.

4 Sediment micromorphology is a “geoarchaeological” technique which uses the microscope to study thin-sections of sediment samples that have been removed on site with accuracy and precision and then hardened with an impregnating agent. Microscopy can determine the size and shape of granules in the sediment, and may ascertain whether some were deposited by “fluviatile” processes, i.e. by flowing water in streams or rivers, by more sluggishly moving water in lakes or swamps (“fluvio-lacustrine”), by wind “aeolian” deposition, by volcanic ash, by organic disturbance by roots, worm-holes, or other animal activities, including human ones, etc.. It can also determine the nature of granules, whether the minerals themselves or inclusions such as small fossils, fragments of bones, shells, plants, flecks of charcoal, or even minute fragments of artifacts such as chert knapping smalls or tiny fragments of potsherds. The word “micromorphology” refers to the study of the structure or form of the sediment, which is particularly important because there may be vertical or horizontal gradations in the phenomena observed, or regular distributions may be interrupted by irregularities. Much, of course, is known about the structure of different soils and the processes underlying their formation today, but sediment micromorphology has to consider how sediments developed in long-vanished environments and climates, and knowledge of geology is fundamental in geoarchaeology.

 5 Biotope refers to an area of uniform environmental conditions providing a living place for a specific assemblage or community of plants and animals. (Greek: bios = life, topos = place).

6. MIS: In the 1960’s it was found that, as igneous rocks in the bed of the ocean floor spread out from volcanically active vents in central ridges beneath the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, they may come to lie in the position of zonal bands, formed sequentially over time, that lie parallel to a ridge. They can offer us information about geomagnetic reversals in the polarity of the planet’s magnetic field at the time they were extruded from the Earth’s molten core. The atomic clock can be used to date many of them when they have been sampled by deep-sea cores. Furthermore, the cores shed light on the density of the sea-water around the time they were formed. This is because, by analyzing the proportion of ¹⁶O to ¹⁸O isotopes in the calcium-carbonate exoskeletons of marine foraminifers (which are protozoan life-forms), in marine sediments that formed over each new zonal band, it is possible to determine the extent to which sea-water was diluted by freshwater from melting ice-caps in warm interglacial periods, or concentrated during cold glacial periods when water with the lighter oxygen isotope was drawn up preferentially into the atmosphere and then deposited elsewhere as snow and ice, and the ⁴⁰K-⁴⁰A  or  ⁴⁰A-³⁹A “atomic clocks” help to date the palaeoclimatic oscillations. Those scientific advances, together with isotopic studies of ice from cores through the Greenland and Antarctic ice sheets, have given increasingly accurate information about the number and timing of palaeoclimatic fluctuations during the Pleistocene, when they became both relatively frequent and increasingly intense when compared with the preceding geological epochs of the Pliocene and Miocene, though others had occurred several times in our planet’s more distant past. They are designated variously as MIS or OIS, standing respectively for marine or oxygen isotope stages. Working backwards from the present interglacial (MIS-1 or OIS-1), odd numbers are used for interglacials, and even numbers for ice ages, with the slightly awkward exception of the last ice age which for various reasons, including a possible climatic amelioration, comprises stages 2, 3 and 4; thus the last interglacial period, between 0.13 and 0.118 Ma, is MIS-5 or OIS-5 (not MIS-3 or OIS-3). Biochronology and pollen analysis at ancient Pleistocene sites can give a general idea about the prevailing climatic conditions, which were mild and moist when sediments accunmulated in Cueva Negra. They imply a warm interglacial period, perhaps one that occurred about 0.8 Ma (MIS-21 or OIS-21), the tenth before the present one we are living in today. Rodent biochronology at Cueva Negra implies a time later than the end, at 0.99 Ma, of the Jaramillo normal polarity episode (1.06-0.99 Ma), in the later part of the Matuyama chron, because rodent species known in southern Spain from before that episode are not present at our site.

Legends to figures:

Fig. 1 Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar in its surroundings.

Fig. 2 Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar: Plan and sections.

Fig. 3 Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar: Hand-axe, human teeth.

Fig. 4 Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar: Deep layer with thermally altered remains.

Fig. 5 Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar: Palaeolithic artifacts.

Fig. 6 Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar in the Upper Quipar Valley with chert outcrops shown.

References:

Walker, M.J., Angelucci, D., Anesin, D., Berna, F., Fernández-Jalvo, Y., Haber-Uriarte, M., López-Martínez, M., Rhodes, S.E., Rodríguez-Estrella, T., Schwenninger, J-L., and Skinner, A.R. Evidence of Early Palaeolthic fire at the late Early Pleistocene site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Caravaca de la Cruz, Murcia, Spain). In preparation for Session B53 The Archaeology of Early Fire Use, XVII UISPP Congress, Burgos. September 1-7 2014.

Angelucci, D., Anesin, D., López-Martínez, M., Haber-Uriarte, M., Rodríguez-Estrella, T., Walker, M.J., 2013. Rethinking stratigraphy and site formation of the Pleistocene deposit at Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Caravaca de la Cruz, Spain). Quaternary Science Reviews 80: 195-199.

! Carrión, J.S., Yll, E.I., Walker, M.J., Legaz, A.J., Chain, C., López, A., 2003. Glacial refugia of temperate, Mediterranean and Ibero-North African flora in south-eastern Spain: new evidence from cave pollen at two Neanderthal man sites. Global Ecology and Biogeography12: 119-129.

Coolidge, F.L. and Wynn, T., 2005. Working memory, its executive functions, and the emergence of modern thinking. Cambridge Archaeological Journal 15: 5-26.

Crovetto, C., 1994, Le industrie litiche, analisi tecnico-tipologica dei reperti di scavo, in Peretto, C. (Ed.), Le Industrie Litiche del Giacimento Paleolitico di Isernia La Pineta, la Tipologia, le Tracce di Utilizzazione, la Sperimentazione, Isernia, Cosmo Iannone, “Istituto Regionale per gli Studi Storici del Molise ‘V. Cuoco’”, pp. 183-353.      .

Crovetto, C., Ferrari, M., Peretto, C., Longo, L., Vianello, F., 1994. The carinated denticulates from the Palaeolithic site of Isernia La Pineta (Molise, Central Italy): tools or flaking waste? The results of the 1993 lithic experiments. Human Evolution 9: 175-207.

de la Torre, I., Mora, R., Domínguez-Rodrigo, M., de Luque, L., Alcalá, L., 2003. The Oldowan industry of Peninj and its bearing on the reconstruction of the technological skills of Lower Pleistocene hominids. Journal of Human Evolution 44: 203-224.

Jiménez-Arenas, J.M., Santonja, M., Botella, M., Palmqvist, P., 2011. The oldest handaxes in Europe: fact or artefact? Journal of Archaeological Science 38: 3340-3349.

Martínez, K., García, J., Carbonell, E., Agustí, J., Bahain, J.-J., Blain, H.-A., Burjachs, F., Cáceres, I., Duval, M., Falguères, C., Gómez, M., Huguet, R., 2010. A new Lower Pleistocene archaeological site in Europe (Vallparadís, Barcelona, Spain). Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107: 5262-5267.

Martínez-Andreu, M., Montes-Bernárdez, R., San Nicolás-del Toro, M., 1989. Avance al estudio del yacimiento musteriense de la Cueva Negra de La Encarnación (Caravaca, Murcia), in Crónica XIX Congreso Nacional de Arqueología, Castellón de la Plana 1987, Ponencias y Comunicaciones Volumen I,  Saragossa, Universidad de Zaragoza, Seminario de Arqueología, Secretariado de los Congresos Arqueológicos Nacionales, “Congresos Arqueológicos Nacionales”, pp. 973-983.

Peretto, C. (Ed.), 1994, Le Industrie Litiche del Giacimento Paleolitico di Isernia La Pineta, la Tipologia, le Tracce di Utilizzazione, la Sperimentazione, Isernia, Cosmo Iannone, “Istituto Regionale per gli Studi Storici del Molise ‘V. Cuoco’”.

Peretto, C., Arzarello, M., Gallotti, R., Lembo, G., Minelli, A., Hohenstein, U.T., 2004. Middle Pleistocene behavioural strategies: the contribution of Isernia La Pineta (Molise, Italy), in Baquedano, E., Rubio Jara, S. (Eds.), Miscelánea en homenaje a Emiliano Aguirre Volumen IV Arqueología, Alcalá de Henares, Museo Arqueológico Regional, “Zona Arqueológica Número 4”, pp. 368-381.

Scott, G.R. and Gibert, L., 2009. The oldest hand-axes in Europe, Nature 461: 82-85.

Stein, J. (Ed.), 1981. Random House Dictionary of the English Language The Unabridged Edition, New York, Random House, p. 537.

Walker, M.J., Angelucci, D., Anesin, D., Berna, F., Fernández-Jalvo, Y., Haber-Uriarte, M., López-Martínez, M., Rhodes, S.E., Rodríguez-Estrella, T., Schwenninger, J-L., and Skinner, A.R. Evidence of Early Palaeolthic fire at the late Early Pleistocene site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Caravaca de la Cruz, Murcia, Spain). In preparation for Session B53 The Archaeology of Early Fire Use, XVII UISPP Congress, Burgos. September 1-7 2014.

! Walker, M.J., Gibert, J., Sánchez, F., Lombardi, A.V., Serrano, I., Eastham, A., Ribot, F., Arribas, A., Sánchez-Cabeza, J-A., García-Orellana, J., Gibert, L., Albaladejo, S., Andreu, J.A., 1998. Two SE Spanish middle palaeolithic sites with Neanderthal remains: Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo and Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Murcia province). Internet Archaeology5 (autumn/winter 1998) http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue5/walker_index.html

! Walker, M.J., Rodríguez-Estrella, T., Carrión García, J.S., Mancheño-Jiménez, M-A., Schwenninger, J-L., López-Martínez, M., López-Jiménez, A., San Nicolás-del Toro, M., Hills, M.D., Walkling, T., 2006. Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Murcia, Southeast Spain): An Acheulian and Levalloiso-Mousteroid assemblage of Palaeolithic artifacts excavated in a Middle Pleistocene faunal context with hominin skeletal remains. Eurasian Prehistory 4: 3-43.

 Walker, M.J, López-Martínez, M.V., Carrión-García, J.S., Rodríguez-Estrella, T., San-Nicolás-del-Toro, M., Schwenninger, J-L., López-Jiménez, A., Ortega-Rodrigáñez, J., Haber-Uriarte, M., Polo-Camacho, J-L., García-Torres, J., Campillo-Boj, M., Avilés-Fernández, A., Zack, W., 2013. Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Murcia, Spain): A late Early Pleistocene hominin site with an “Acheulo-Levalloiso-Mousteroid” Palaeolithic assemblage. Quaternary International 294: 135-159.

Zack, W., Andronikov, A., Rodríguez-Estrella, T., López-Martínez, M., Haber-Uriarte, M., Holliday, V., Lauretta, D., Walker, M.J., 2013. Stone procurement and transport at the late Early Pleistocene site of Cueva Negra del Estrecho del Río Quípar (Murcia, SE Spain). Quartär,  Internationales Jahrbuch zur Eiszeitalter- und Steinzeitforschung, International Yearbook for Ice Age and Stone Age Research  60: 7-28.

Michael Walker*^†, Mariano López-Martínez**^†, María Haber-Uriarte***^†

© All rights reserved.

*Department of Zoology and Physical Anthropology, Biology Faculty, Murcia University, Espinardo Campus Universitario Edificio 20, 30100 Murcia, Spain.

Email: [email protected]; [email protected]; “M.J.Walker” <[email protected]>  Tel: 34-620-267104

**Calle Pintor Joaquín 10-4º-I, 30009 Murcia, Spain.

Email: [email protected]  Tel: 34-630-408806

***Department of Prehistory, Archaeology, Ancient History, Mediaeval History and Historiographical Techniques and Science, Faculty of Letters, Murcia University, La Merced Campus, Calle Santo Cristo 1, 30001 Murcia, Spain.

Email: [email protected]; [email protected], “María Haber” <[email protected]> Tel: 629-756183

^†Directors of the excavation, Murcian Association for the Study of Palaeoanthropology and the Quaternary, MUPANTQUAT web-site http:www.mupantquat.com (Murcia Archaeological Museum, Avenida Alfonso X El Sabio 7, 30008 Murcia, Spain), all correspondence to MUPANTQUAT Secretary M.López Martínez <[email protected]>), and

^†Murcia University Experimental Sciences Research Group E005-11 “Quaternary Palaeoecology, Palaeoanthropology and Technology” (c/o Dr.J.S.Carrión García, Department of Plant Biology (Botany), Biology Faculty, Murcia University, Espinardo Campus Edificio 20, 30100 Murcia, Spain)

The Sima de las Palomas vertical cave system was formed by karst solution of a Triassic marble hill in present-day Spain overlooking the Mediterranean. In 1991, a speleologist descending the 18-m deep entrance shaft (Fig.1) extracted a fossil (designated SP1) which, once the cemented breccia was removed, comprised Neanderthal maxillae connected to the mandible, with almost all their adult teeth. Subsequent systematic excavation (Walker et al., 2012a) uncovered three undisturbed Neanderthal partial skeletons (SP96, SP92, and a child, SP97) with several skeletal parts in anatomical position (including cranio-mandibular articulation, femoro-pelvic articulation, elbow, rib-cage, vertebral column, shoulder girdle, foot bones, etc.), Mousterian Palaeolithic artifacts, and animal bones (some charred), all lying deeply in a cemented rock tumble within the upper part of an 18-m deep wall of brecciated sediments (Fig. 2) was left exposed by miners after they took out most of the shaft’s sedimentary fill ca. 1900. SP96 and SP97 have crania and mandibles (Figs. 3, 4), unlike SP92. Because SP1 had lain near SP92 it might be SP92’s head. Excavation uncovered SP96 lying with elbows flexed and hands touching the forehead. Computer-assisted tomography revealed hand-bones in breccia adhering to the forehead of the SP97, identified as a child (Walker et al., 2012b), which lay underneath SP96, an adult, perhaps its parent. The position of the upper extremities implies intentional arrangement before rigor mortis had set in; it is recorded at some other Mousterian sites (Defleur, 1993).

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Fig. 1: Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo: Main shaft.

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Fig. 2: Excavation area A: Mouth of Main Shaft. B: Excavation area C: Base of rock tumble that contained the three Neanderthal skeletons. D: Thin hard conglomerate band beneath which excavation is continuing in layers with Mousterian remains.

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Fig. 3: Neanderthal adult female skeleton SP96, “Paloma”

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Fig. 4: Neanderthal child skull SP97 (“Paloma’s child”)

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Individual articulated skeletons are very important indeed because they provide more precise and accurate estimates of body size and proportions than estimates derived from pooled statistical analyses of a given bone type (e.g. femur, tibia, or humerus) from an assemblage of bones from different people who may well not be identifiable individually. SP96 was a short Neanderthal woman (”Paloma”), less than 20 years old, with the typically female wide greater sciatic notch of the pelvic basin which underwent post mortem distortion (that “virtual” reconstruction will correct from tomographs). The skeleton is about 85% complete, which permits precise and accurate morphological measurements for estimating body proportions (e.g. crural index, etc.) which are undoubtedly Neanderthal and robust (“hyperpolar”). Remarkably, its stature is one of the shortest known for Neanderthal adults (Walker et al., 2011a).

The child skeleton, SP97, lay underneath “Paloma” (her child?). Also short in stature, SP92 was probably less than 25 years old (Walker et al., 2011b). Short, too, was the owner of SP77, a femoral head from looser sediment that had banked up against cemented rock tumble and contained scattered Neanderthal remains, including mandibular fragments of a baby, a child, and an adolescent female (Walker et al., 2010a; Walker et al., 2008); this sediment contained lenses with signs of burning. Fragments of three more Neanderthal mandibles were found while sieving rubble left by miners. The Neanderthal finds included many teeth and bone fragments.

In all, at least 9 Neanderthals are represented at the site. The excavated Neanderthal remains correspond to a time about 50,000 years ago; different scientific methods  give estimates implying >40,000-<60,000 (U-series, TL, ¹⁴C: for details, see Walker et al., 2012b). Palaeopalynology indicates cool moist conditions though with persistence of species ill-adapted to resist frost (Carrion et al., 2003).

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Fig. 5: Stratigraphical position of the three articulated Neanderthal skeletons and situations of dated materials and two other Neanderthal mandibles (for further information, see Walker et al., 2012a).

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      Excavated with the SP97 child were the only articulated bones of large animals found at the site so far, viz., two sets of horse ankles (calcaneum, talus, cuboid), one group, cemented by CaCO₃ to SP97’s skull, had undergone burning, the other, unburnt, beneath SP97’s trunk, included additionally a distal tibial fragment, and a third horse talus lay underneath SP97. Two leopard metacarpal bones lay near SP97’s skull and two leopard hind-paws, with metatarsal and phalangeal bones in anatomical articulation, lay 0.5 m from SP97’s skull in a similar level. It is unlikely horse ankles and leopard paws were fortuitous accumulations, given absence around SP97 of other body parts of those species. A heavily burnt leopard temporal bone found in mine rubble implies Neanderthal intervention; a large premolar tooth implies presence of cave hyaenas. Flakes and spalls from flint-knapping lay close to SP97. The site has yielded some carefully prepared Levallois points on flat triangular flint flakes with finely-retouched margins, surely effective for hunting with thrusting spears. Flint outcrops are unknown on Cabezo Gordo. Some flint quite likely came from a hydrothermal outcrop inspected ca. 25 km to the south, though it is hardly the source of the bulk of the Palaeolithic assemblage. Despite lack of clear-cut signs of intentional interment, large stones might have been thrown over SP96, SP92 and SP97 to deter leopards and hyaenas from disturbing the corpses. This is a prosaic interpretation.

Rarely are Neanderthal skeletons uncovered in anatomical connection. When animals die their soft parts decompose quickly, aided and abetted by various organisms (carnivorous animals or birds, insects, saprophytic fungi, bacteria, etc.), after which skeletons come apart. Long before they can get buried by natural deposition of sediment, wind and rain may scatter bones where carnivorous animals and birds have failed (exceptionally, skeletons of creatures trapped in caves or swamps escape from being scattered). At Sima de las Palomas three articulated skeletons from 50,000 years ago lay close together. It raises a conjecture that behavioural or cultural impingement occurred, implicating individuals other than the three deceased. Maybe it is an instance of Neanderthals attending to their dead, albeit with a prosaic motive.

The three skeletons and the rock tumble over them lay on a thin bed of extraordinarily hard conglomerate, though it contained some Palaeolithic artifacts and charred bone fragments. Beneath it coarse sediment has been excavated to a depth of 2 m so far, containing many bones of red deer, horse and other herbivores, many of which are charred, as well as rabbits and other small animals, including mandibular fragments of two porcupines (Hystrix brachyura: Rhodes et al., 2013).Tortoise seems to have played a part in the diet (Morales-Pérez and Sanchis-Serra, 2009). Characteristically Mousterian flint artifacts are present. Several smooth rounded cobbles were undoubtedly brought by Neanderthals to the site from stream gravels in the plain below. Being larger than some hammer-stones from the site they might have been used to pound or grind minerals (perhaps haematite; the Cabezo Gordo marble contains veins of magnetite and other iron ores) or foodstuff. Vegetable food at Sima de las Palomas is suggested both by phytoliths discovered in calculus on some Neanderthal teeth (Salazar-García et al., 2013) and two examples of dental caries (Walker et al., 2010b).

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Acknowledgements:

We thank all our research collaborators named in the text or references, but above all Dr. E. Trinkaus for his tireless work. Among our many other collaborators we thank archaeologists Dr. D.A. Roe and I. Martín Lerma, palaeontologist Dr. X. Murélaga Bereicua, and anthracologist Dr. E. Badal García.  

Legends to figures:

Fig. 1  Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo: Main shaft.

Fig. 2 Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo: Excavation area. A Mouth of Main Shaft. B Excavation area. C Base of rock tumble that contained the three Neanderthal skeletons. D Thin hard conglomerate band beneath which excavation is continuing in layers with Mousterian remains.

Fig. 3 Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo: Neanderthal adult female skeleton SP96, “Paloma”. SP96 has parts of all skeletal units except feet. Open L (left) greater sciatic notch shows SP96 was female. Full occlusal eruption of L M3 and ventrally unfused sacral bodies, unfused proximal clavicular epiphysis, and partially fused iliac crest, imply death at ≤20 years. All sufficiently-preserved long-bone and manual epiphyses are fused. SP96 skull had undergone crushing with loss of mandibular corpus and posterior, inferior and most of L neurocranium. R (right) facial elements are undistorted, albeit broken and displaced, with 22 teeth cemented into them. Axial skeleton comprises partial lower cervical, upper thoracic, and lumbar vertebrae; 5 sacral bodies; and >6 R ribs cemented to R scapula and clavicle which are complete, as are all 6 upper limb long bones. Metacarpals and manual phalanges are mostly present in anatomical position (some carpals show erosion). Posterior ilum apart, all elements of ossa coxae are present on at least one side, albeit broken, displaced, and cemented. R and L femora and L tibia are almost complete. Only SP96 and La Ferrassie 1 afford reliable adult Neanderthal lengths of all 4 major limb segments, clavicular and scapular lengths, and weight-bearing articular dimensions. SP96 Neanderthal cranial features: lateral supraorbital torus; broad supratoral sulcus; large frontozygomatic suture with columnar frontal process of zygoma; little horizontal angulation of anterolateral zygoma; absent canine fossa; strongly bilevel nasal floor with sharply-angled inferior nasal aperture margin; nasal aperture breadth (30–32 mm) overlapping between Neanderthal and Upper Palaeolithic modern human values; mandible with high R coronoid process; mandibular notch with lowest point closer to condyle; prominent superior medial pterygoid tubercle on ramus; rounded L gonial angle; strongly shovelled I² with marked labial convexity. Neanderthal postcranial features: strong dorsal sulcus of the right scapula; narrow medial humeral pillar; medially orientated radial tuberosity; subequal pollical phalangeal lengths; ulnar deviation of pollical distal phalanx; elongated superior pubic ramus with thinned ventral margin; absent femoral pilasteric development; rounded convex cross-section of tibial diaphysis; absence of distinct fibular diaphyseal sulci. Aspects of SP96 less common in Neanderthals: nontaurodont teeth; short I₁ labial root length (SP19 and SP21 have Neanderthal values); absent opponens pollicis flange on metacarpal 1; manual terminal phalanges of digits 3 and 4 with apical tufts lacking the Neanderthal rounded curve (e.g. SP28) and distinct ungual spines.

Fig. 4  Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo: Neanderthal child skull SP97 (“Paloma’s child”).

Fig. 5 Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo: Stratigraphical position of the three articulated Neanderthal skeletons and situations of dated materials and two other Neanderthal mandibles (for further information, see Walker et al., 2012a).

Fig. 6  Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo: Exploded stratigraphical sections and site plan; the thin hard conglomerate band in Fig. 2D runs across the middle of the sections.

References:

Carrión, J.S., Yll, E.I., Walker, M.J., Legaz, A.J., Chain, C., López, A., 2003. Glacial refugia of temperate, Mediterranean and Ibero-North African flora in south-eastern Spain: new evidence from cave pollen at two Neanderthal man sites. Global Ecology and Biogeography12: 119-129.

Defleur, A., 1993. Les sépultures moustériennes, Paris, Éditions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique.

Morales-Pérez, J.V. and Sanchis-Serra, A., 2009. The Quaternary fossil record of the genus Testudo in the Iberian Peninsula. Archaeological implications and diachronic distribution in the western Mediterranean. Journal of Archaeological Science31: 1152-1162.

Rhodes, S.E., Walker, M.J., López-Martínez, M., Haber-Uriarte, M., López.Jiménez, A.,  Buitrago-López, A.T., Dewar, G., 2013. Analysis of Hystrix specimens recovered from Sima de las Palomas, Murcia, Spain, in Program with Abstracts, Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology, 41st Annual Meeting, October 17-20 2013 Scarborough, ON (University of Toronto, Scarborough).Scarborough, University of Toronto, and Canadian Association for Physical Anthropology, p. 47.

Salazar-García, D.C., Power, R.C., Sanchis Serra, A., Villaverde, V., Walker, M.J., Henry, A.G., 2013. Neanderthal diets in central and southeastern Mediterranean Iberia. Quaternary International318,3-18.

Walker, M.J., López Martínez, M., Ortega-Rodrigáñez, J., Haber-Uriarte, M., López-Jiménez, A., Avilés-Fernández, A., Polo-Camacho, J.L., Campillo-Boj, M., García-Torres, J., Carrión-García, J.S., San Nicolas-del Toro, M., Rodríguez-Estrella, T., 2012a. The excavation of the buried articulated Neanderthal skeletons at Sima de las Palomas (Murcia, SE Spain). Quaternary International 259: 7-21.

Walker, M., Ortega Rodrigáñez, J., Agut Giménez, A., Soler Laguía, M., Zollikofer, C.P.E., Ponce de León, M.S. 2012b. The Sima de las Palomas Neanderthal skeletons: First steps towards “virtual” reconstruction. Proceedings of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution 1: 191 (special issue, J-J.Hublin, W.Roebroeks, M.Soressi, T.Terberger, F.Spoor, Eds., Proceedings of the 2^nd Annual Meeting of the European Society for the Study of Human Evolution ESHE 21-22 September 2012 Bordeaux/France). Leipzig, Max-Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Society for the Study of Human Evolution.

Walker, M.J., Ortega, J., Parmová, K., López, M., Trinkaus, E., 2011a. Morphology, body proportions, and postcranial hypertrophy of a female Neandertal from the Sima de las Palomas, southeastern Spain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 108:10087–10091. 

Walker, M.J., Ortega Rodrigáñez, J., López Martínez, M., Parmová, K.,  Trinkaus, E., 2011b. Neandertal postcranial remains from the Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, Murcia, southeastern Spain. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 144: 505-515.

Walker, M.J., Lombardi, A.V., Zapata, J., Trinkaus, E., 2010a. Neandertal mandibles from the Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, Murcia, southeastern Spain. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 142: 261-272.

Walker, M.J., Zapata, J., Lombardi, A.V., Trinkaus, E., 2010b. New evidence of dental pathology in 40,000 year old Neandertals. Journal of Dental Research90: 428-432. 

Walker, M.J., Gibert, J., López Martínez, M., Lombardi, A.V., Pérez-Pérez, A., Zapata, J., Ortega, J., Higham, T., Pike, A., Schwenninger, J-L., Zilhão, J., Trinkaus, E., 2008. Late Neandertals in Southeastern Spain: Sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, Murcia, Spain. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA, 105: 20631-20636.

Michael Walker*^†, Mariano López-Martínez**^†, María Haber-Uriarte***^†

© All rights reserved.

*Department of Zoology and Physical Anthropology, Biology Faculty, Murcia University, Campus Universitario de Espinardo Edificio 20, 30100 Murcia, Spain.

Email: [email protected]  Tel: 34-620-267104

**Calle Pintor Joaquín 10-4º-I, 30009 Murcia, Spain.

Email: [email protected]  Tel: 34-630-408806

***Department of Prehistory, Archaeology, Ancient History, Mediaeval History and Historiographical Techniques and Science, Faculty of Letters, Murcia University, Campus Universitario de La Merced, Calle Santo Cristo 1, 30001 Murcia, Spain.

Email: [email protected] Tel: 629-756183

^†Directors of the excavation, Murcian Association for the Study of Palaeoanthropology and the Quaternary, MUPANTQUAT web-site http:www.mupantquat.com (Murcia Archaeological Museum, Avenida Alfonso X El Sabio 7, 30008 Murcia, Spain), all correspondence to MUPANTQUAT Secretary M.López Martínez <[email protected]>, and

^†Murcia University Experimental Sciences Research Group E005-11 “Quaternary Palaeoecology, Palaeoanthropology and Technology” (c/o Dr.J.S.Carrión García, Department of Plant Biology, Biology Faculty, Murcia University, Campus Universitario de Espinardo Edificio 20, 30100 Murcia, Spain)

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Homer, the great singer of tales, describes Mycenae as well built (euktimene), with wide streets (euryagyia), and rich in gold (polychrysos) in his famous epic poems Iliad and Odyssey. Such epithets were used repeatedly, interchangeably and rather conventionally for various cities in the formulaic language of Greek oral epic poetry – but not so for Mycenae. These three Homeric words epitomize vividly and effectively the complex archaeological picture of Mycenae that has emerged in the last two centuries. Systematic excavations and surveys of the site have revealed an imposing citadel fortified with massive cyclopean walls – a marvel of engineering – which comprised a magnificent palace, shrines and temples, workshops and storerooms, houses, and royal graves; outside the citadel walls was evidence of a large and densely populated town, extensive cemeteries with richly furnished royal shaft graves and monumental tholos tombs, an impressive water supply system of clay pipes, channels, underground cisterns, and dams; and finally, an extensive road network was traced connecting the citadel with its surrounding region and with select ports that gave access to trade routes all over the Mediterranean. Mycenae, a World Heritage site, was the leader of a closely-knit network of palatial states that shared a homogeneous culture – the fabled Mycenaean civilization.               

The citadel of Mycenae, comprising an area of 30,000 m², was built on a low rocky hill rising 278 m above sea level and approximately 40-45 m above the surrounding plain. The hill of Mycenae is nestled between two mountains, Profitis Elias to the north and Zara to the south, from which it is separated by two ravines formed by winter torrents, Kokoretsa and Chavos, respectively; it is, therefore, a natural stronghold, protected by deep gorges and steep rocky sides all around, except its western slope which is the only accessible side. The natural defensibility of the site was further enhanced by a formidable 900 m-long circuit wall built of huge boulders in the megalithic ‘cyclopean’ technique to imposing dimensions (12-15 m high and 5-8 m thick); furthermore, the citadel was supplied with fresh water by the Perseia spring which lies 360 m to the east and approximately 13 m higher than its summit. The hill of Mycenae and the adjacent mountains belong to the western part of the Arachnaion mountain range that divides the Argolid from Corinthia, and rise at the mouth of the only passage connecting the two regions and in the crossroads of the eastward routes to the Saronic Gulf. The hill of Mycenae, therefore, combines a strong geopolitical location, which controls access points to and from the Argolid, and a commanding view of the Argive plain to the south below.

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Map of the Late Bronze Age Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, showing relative location of Mycenae.

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           A Brief History of Mycenae and the Mycenaean World

The first Greeks descended through the Balkans into mainland Greece in ca. 2300/2200 BC (beginning of the Early Helladic III). They settled down mainly in the fertile inland, formed villages and eventually small towns, organized egalitarian societies and developed a distinct regional culture (Middle Helladic) based on agricultural economy and limited trade contacts with the Cyclades and eventually Crete. Rising to power was a long process through trade, diplomatic contacts, and constant warfare abroad and at home during the formative Early Mycenaean period (Late Helladic I-IIA/B, ca. 1650-1420/1410 BC). The Mycenaeans proved to be meticulous students: through increasing contacts with Minoan Crete, their trade horizons gradually expanded from the Balkans and Northern Europe to Egypt, the Levant, Cyprus, and Asia Minor. This gradual expansion is documented in the multicultural amalgam of stylistic, iconographic, technical elements and materials of the exquisite finds in the royal Shaft Graves at Mycenae (Minoan, Egyptian, European/Balkan, Hittite, and Helladic influences), the extensive corpus of foreign imports in Greece (orientalia and aegyptiaca), and the increasing Mycenaean exports abroad. Contemporary iconographical evidence (e.g. flotilla fresco from Akrotiri at Thera, silver Siege Rhyton from Grave Circle A at Mycenae) illustrate some of the early military achievements of the rising new power abroad: raiding jointly with the Minoan fleet foreign exotic lands (Egypt?), sieging and sacking foreign towns. The Mycenaeans were recorded as “Ahhiya” or “Ahhiyawa” (~Homeric Achai(w)oi/Achaeans) in Hittite diplomatic documents already by 1420/1400 BC (since the reign of Tudhaliya II) and as “Danaja”or“Tanaja” (~ Homeric Danaoi) in Egyptian tribute lists like those of Thutmose III (ca. 1450 BC) and Amenhotep III (Karnak, ca. 1380 BC), or on a statue-base from Kom-el-Hetan (ca. 1380 BC), where “Mukanu” or mki[n] (~Mycenae) was listed first among mainland sites. In the following decades, the “Danaja” references in Egyptian sources gradually replaced the earlier “Keftiu” accounts and depictions of Minoan embassies of the 15^th century BC, echoing contemporary archaeological evidence for drastic Mycenaean expansion and simultaneous reduction of Minoan presence abroad. This reversal of the political and military situation in the Aegean in the 14^th century BC was triggered by the gradual infiltration and, arguably, military presence of the Mycenaeans on Crete in 1420/1410-1370 BC (Late Helladic IIIA1), in the wake of a devastating earthquake which had leveled the Minoan palaces and left the Minoan world in disarray. The Mycenaean occupation of Crete marked for the Minoans the beginning of the end and for the Mycenaeans the end of the beginning.

The Mycenaean world and particularly Mycenae flourished in the following two centuries (ca. 1420/1410-1200/1175 BC), a period known as Palatial Mycenaean or Late Helladic IIIA/B. The Minoan palaces served as modus operandi for the sociopolitical and economic organization of the rising Mycenaean states. This period is marked by regional centralization of power, state formation, and advanced socio-economic organization, geared towards efficient surplus local production and overseas trade, both coordinated and regulated by the palace administration and sustained by palatial bureaucracy (Linear B). At home, the Mycenaean palaces were fortified into citadels, large-scale public works were carried out, and production was systematized; at Mycenae, the cyclopean walls were constructed (1350 BC) and later expanded with the addition of the Lion Gate and postern gate (1250 BC), water supply was secured by means of an underground cistern and dams (1200 BC), a new palatial complex was built to replace an earlier palace (1300/1250 BC), the outer town expanded, and roads and bridges were built to serve the region of Mycenae. Abroad, the Mycenaeans assumed control over the Minoan colonies and trade outposts in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean, and further expanded to the east and west, thus firmly establishing their own trade network and successfully succeeding the Minoans in the overseas trade (Mycenaean thalassocracy). A vital sector of the centralized palatial economy and sociopolitical structure, overseas trade required not only a tight network of island and coastal outposts, but also highly effective diplomacy. Diplomatic contacts involved exchange of royal letters and gifts, ambassadors, official royal visits, treaties and bilateral agreements. Certain Mycenaean palaces like Mycenae, Thebes, and Pylos maintained a protagonistic role in overseas trade of luxury/prestige goods and diplomatic contacts at the highest level. The organized trade of luxury/prestige goods which required a well-coordinated control mechanism for acquiring raw materials and producing artifacts or other products to be marketed in exchange, afforded luxury to the elite, while the king’s special access to external prestige goods reinforced royal image and authority. The exquisite artifacts found in tombs in the area of Mycenae, Pylos, and Thebes, as well as the great variety of precious materials recorded in palatial inventory lists and yielded in the archaeological contexts of palatial workshops further document privileged connections and constant contact with Egypt, Anatolia, and the Near East, closely following the successful Minoan archetype.

In the course of the 12^th century BC rapid, dramatic, and combined changes in several of the socio-economic, political, and environmental variables affected a fragile balance and triggered a chain reaction whose accumulating effect was progressively magnified and multiplied, resulting inevitably in a catastrophic systems collapse which caused the decline and fall of the Mycenaean world. The latter half of the 13^th century BC was marked by intense and frequent seismic activity in certain regions of mainland Greece (two major destruction horizons were recorded at Mycenae in ca. 1240 BC and 1200/1180 BC). These ‘earthquake storms’ caused severe structural damage, local fires, disorganization and disarray, immediate allocation of manpower for costly and energy-consuming repairs, and hence disruption of economic life and trade. A typical example of a low-diversified surplus-geared economy without sufficient alternative resources to fall back to, the Mycenaean economy could hardly withstand and recover from temporary setbacks or survive the combined impact of various factors, such as natural catastrophes (earthquakes, extensive fires, severe climatic conditions, droughts, crop failure), ecological overexploitation, and palatial military/financial overextension. Natural disasters may have acted as catalysts for a catastrophic system failure, inflicting the final blow to the system: they eliminated short-term food supplies, destroyed high-yield specialized agricultural production and livestock, and consequently upset dependent satellite industries (flax, textile, wine and oil industries), disrupted trade, damaged the infrastructure, and demoralized the population. Inevitably, civil unrest, internal wars and raids by starving populations on less affected regions followed, causing decentralization and political fragmentation, dissolution of the socioeconomic nexus, severe depopulation of vital areas, and emigration to the coasts, islands, and overseas. The movement of peoples (called “Sea People” in the Egyptian sources) and the subsequent widespread destructions in Asia Minor and the Levant in the beginning of the 12^th century BC led to the collapse of the Hittite Empire, but also eradicated the Mycenaean trade outposts and colonies in the East. The loss of their off-shore trade posts disrupted foreign trade and paralyzed the overseas sector of the centralized palatial economy, which, given the peripheral geopolitical location of Mycenaean Greece, depended on the contact with the main zone of exchange through intermediaries. That must have been another terrible blow to the already distressed and staggering palatial economy, forcing it to fall back on domestic production and isolation. In the course of the 12^th century BC many small settlements in several regions (i.e. Argolid, Achaia, Attica, Euboia, Thessaly, islands, Cyprus, Asia Minor) sustained continuity and achieved substantial revival with their limited production and trade capacity, despite the general decline and fragmentation; on the contrary, the citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns, and Thebes, though partially repaired and reoccupied, and despite attempts for economic revival, never fully recovered and were gradually abandoned. The deterioration of the same system that had strengthened central palatial authority through the coordination and regulation of political and socioeconomic life resulted inevitably in the dissolution of the palaces’ power, decentralization and fragmentation of Mycenaean Greece. It appears, therefore, that it was the Mycenaean elite and its diagnostic, key elements (palatial administration and writing, foreign contacts and luxury goods, monumental art and megalithic architecture) that suffered the most from the system meltdown, whereas at a lower level the impact was less direct, and the core of Mycenaean society changed more gradually (in terms of basic material culture and cultural practices) and evolved organically into the Early Iron Age Greece.

           History of Excavations

Mycenae was first explored in 1841 by K. Pittakis on behalf of the Athens Archaeological Society; Pittakis cleared the area of the Lion Gate, the Treasury of Atreus and the Klytemnestra tholos tomb. Mycenae, however, was brought into the spotlight of worldwide acclaim by H. Schliemann in 1874/1876 who, following the description of the ancient traveler Pausanias, discovered five royal shaft graves in Grave Circle A (a sixth shaft grave was later excavated by P. Stamatakis), all furnished with unprecedented treasures of jewelry, weapons, vases, and other exotic artifacts and materials. This discovery, which followed Schliemann’s own excavations at Troy and his discovery there of the so-called ‘Priam’s Treasure,’ secured for Schliemann the title of the ‘father’ of Mycenaean archaeology and established the existence of the Mycenaean civilization (quite befittingly named after the most famous and powerful citadel, the seat of legendary king Agamemnon, and the first to be excavated on mainland Greece). In 1884 Captain B. Steffen mapped the area of Mycenae (Karten von Mykenai). In 1886-1897 Chr. Tsountas excavated most of the citadel, five tholos tombs and over one hundred chamber tombs. In 1920 the British School under A.J.B. Wace took over the investigation of the site; Wace excavated several sectors of the citadel, several buildings outside the walls, four tholos tombs and many chamber tombs, and published his results in monumental publications (1920-1957). Lord W. Taylour continued his work in the cult center of the citadel (1959-1969).  Meanwhile, the Athens Archaeological Society resumed the investigation of the site with the accidental discovery, excavation, and monumental publication of the royal Grave Circle B outside the walls by G. Mylonas and I. Papadimitriou (1951-1954). In 1958 G. Mylonas resumed the investigation of the citadel on behalf of the Athens Archaeological Society; he excavated several sectors of the citadel as well as houses and chamber tombs outside the walls (1958-1988). He was succeeded by S. Iakovidis (1988-2013) who excavated various sectors and buildings inside and outside the citadel and published the results of earlier excavations. Iakovidis conducted jointly with E. French and the British School an extensive archaeological survey of the wider area of Mycenae (Archaeological Atlas of Mycenae). Chr. Maggidis worked with Iakovidis on Building K inside the citadel (2002-2008) and has been publishing earlier excavations (Palatial Workshops); meanwhile, Maggidis conducted an extensive geophysical survey of the surrounding area that led to the discovery of the Lower Town (2003-2013), and has been excavating sectors of the Lower Town since 2007.

           Was there ever a Lower Town at Mycenae?

Since the commencement of the systematic investigation of Mycenae by Heinrich Schliemann in 1874, the excavation of the site has focused mainly on the citadel itself, comprising approximately 70% of the total fortified area. Outside the walls, work has been limited to royal cemeteries of shaft graves and tholos tombs, and a fair part of the extant chamber tomb cemeteries stretching farther on the hill slopes around Mycenae. Unfortunately, only a very small segment of the settlement once surrounding the citadel (12-13 completely or partially excavated buildings) has been brought to light, mainly west or north of the citadel. Although some of these structures are clearly domestic units (Panagia group), others (Oil-Merchant complex) appear to have been a combination of residential areas, storerooms, and workshops, which are plausibly interpreted as palatial buildings and annexes connected with palatial economy, bureaucracy and administration. An extensive archaeological survey which was jointly conducted by the Athens Archaeological Society and the British School at Athens in the 1990s, located, identified and mapped all visible remains throughout the wider area of Mycenae (32 hectares), including more than 750 sites, structures, buildings, guard towers, beacons, wall remains, tombs, roads, and bridges. However, the discovery of scattered, isolated building groups of both palatial and residential use, oddly intermingled with tholos tombs and served by separate drain systems, have led scholars to suggest that the citadel of Mycenae was surrounded by several loosely connected small settlements, each with its own cemetery. According to this theory, such satellite settlements must have gradually expanded from original nuclei in an additive, open plan and eventually framed the highways and roads leading to Mycenae. The alleged absence of large-scale urbanization has been repeatedly hypothesized for Mycenae and other Mycenaean centers. Such views were apparently fueled by the lack of sufficiently extensive excavations of settlements on mainland Greece and especially of the sites surrounding the main palaces and citadels of Mycenae, Tiryns, Pylos, Thebes, Orchomenos, and Athens. This picture, though, is at variance with the textual evidence of the Linear B tablets for Mycenaean political geography, administration, and socioeconomic organization of the Mycenaean states. Furthermore, in recent years intensive and extensive regional surveys on the mainland have produced important spatial analysis of settlement patterns; meanwhile, renewed excavation at palatial sites and their surrounding areas (Mycenae, Tiryns, Thebes, Pylos) and systematic extensive excavation of several Mycenaean settlements combined with the textual evidence and regional survey data, reveal emerging settlement patterns consistent with varying degrees of localized urbanization.

           Detecting the Lower Town

The terraces at the south foothill of the citadel and opposite the Atreus Treasury are located in the most prominent area en route to Mycenae; paradoxically, however, these terraces yielded no visible remains during the archaeological surface survey of the 1990s, apparently due to their deep river alluvium deposits. It was aerial reconnaissance that triggered the detection and led to the discovery of the Lower Town. The software-enhanced analysis of high-resolution aerial photographs of the area around Mycenae, taken in the spring of 1988 and kindly supplied by the Greek Military Geographical Service (G.Y.S.), revealed upon careful inspection distinct ‘ghost traces’ of walls as crop/soil marks on several terraces south of the citadel. These aerial photographs of Mycenae were also used in conjunction with a silo-locating military program (ERDAS Imagine 8.4) that compares visible, recognizable features within the photograph to other features that match the set parameters in order to produce the resulting image of a site prediction model. The areas in red were the most interesting because they picked up likely features in the very same locations targeted by the archaeological survey and highlighted on the aerial photograph as producing ghost traces. These areas (SEB I, SWB I-VII) were finally selected as being most likely to produce promising remote-sensing results and physical remains by excavation.

Subsequently, a systematic geophysical survey was launched at Mycenae by Prof. Chr. Maggidis under the auspices of the Athens Archaeological Society (2003-2013) with the generous funding and technical support of Dickinson College, the Institute for Aegean Prehistory (INSTAP), the Mycenaean Foundation, and the Geophysical Laboratory of the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Several ground-based remote-sensing methods were combined to map all visible and buried structures in the area around the citadel, to locate buildings, sectors and roads of the settlement of Mycenae outside the walls, and ultimately to create a 3-D digital model of the buried remains of the Lower Town of Mycenae. The targeted area is located immediately south of the citadel on the terraced fields flanking the dry riverbed ravine of Chavos: South East Bank (SEB), South West Bank (SWB). The survey area was selected after careful examination of the local geomorphology (artificially terraced land, thick undisturbed fill, sealed and protected by successive river alluvium deposits) and consideration of several topographical and archaeological variables. More than 50 grids were surveyed with Ground Penetrating Radar, Fluxgate Gradiometer, and Electrometer on six separate terraces on both banks. Plotting and mapping of the survey grids was carried out by means of differential GPS and Total Station. The survey data, the geomorphology of the study area, the archaeological remains and topographical parameters have been integrated in a GIS model.

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Map of Mycenae, showing location and extent of survey area in relation to the acropolis where the citadel is located.

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In general, the remote sensing revealed walls, structures, buildings, features, gates and roads at two different depth ranges (0.40–1 m and 1.20–2 m) which consistently pervade most of the surveyed contexts; these depth ranges define possibly two superimposed occupation horizons, including an overlying Geometric/Archaic and an underlying Mycenaean level, accordingly, which are further set apart by the distinct types, size, and orientation of their structures. The South West Bank grids have produced the most interesting results so far. One of the most important finds of the geophysical survey was identified in the SWB Vb grid: at a depth of –0.68 m emerges a road surface (3 m wide) running N–S (roughly parallel to the modern road and roughly aligned with the Oil-Merchant complex), which may well be the northbound highway leading up to the citadel through the settlement. Two L-shaped, solid features to the north and on either side of the road may be gates or towers, considering their diagnostic shape and large size (at least 3.5 m wide, preserved to a total height of approximately 1 m). This feature is strikingly similar to another structure located at the extreme edge of the Panagitsa hill and labeled by Steffen in 1884 as a gate. What appears, therefore, in the radar image on grid SWB Vb must be the main gate into the Lower Town of Mycenae (Central Gate). Another gate and part of the impressive 5 m-thick outer fortification wall were further traced by the gradiometer on terrace SWB IIb by the western bank of Chavos (East Gate). This gate is connected perhaps with the retaining wall along the western bank and the remains (rock-cuttings) of a Mycenaean bridge at the mouth of the gorge, which it may have served. Several other structures were traced, identified and mapped, including two large buildings (SWB III) and an immense, multi-room compound (SEB I). Furthermore, all nine tholos tombs of Mycenae were surveyed, revealing interesting details of construction and topography. The discovery of these important landmarks sheds new light on the elusive topography and complex road network of the settlement around the citadel of Mycenae, and forms the basis for land expropriation and systematic excavation of the settlement of Mycenae.

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GPR/Gradiometer map of the Lower Town (excavated area and gates)

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The number, size, type, and spatial distribution of the extant features, structures, and buildings traced thus far by remote-sensing seem to support the possibility of a sizable urban center surrounding the citadel on the west, south, and north sides: this town may have extended over an area of ca. 30-50 hectares (with a normal population density of 200 people per hectare), consisting mainly of domestic units and commercial buildings, but also including larger palatial structures and annexes (workshops, offices, storerooms) located closer to the main access roads and highways. The discovery of two gates, associated perhaps with an outer circuit wall, further reinforces the possibility of an organized town plan; to this conclusion point also definite town boundary markers that appear to have been in place already by the late 14^th century BC. The peripheral spatial distribution of the cemeteries which form a circle farther around the citadel and the settlement demarcates the borders of the Lower Town, thus revealing a site pattern of three successive and concentric occupation zones (palatial, residential, and cemetery). The discovered buildings outside the walls belong to three different types, the oblong corridor plan, the square version with rooms arranged around a central court, and the megaron type; all three types have been also identified in the radar images on the south, terraced slope. Furthermore, it appears that although the palatial annexes outside the walls were destroyed by earthquake and fire in ca. 1240 BC and were subsequently abandoned, several residential buildings were repaired and continued to be in use well into the 13^th/12^th c. BC along with a number of chamber tombs, a pattern which is consistent with the composition of a town.

The geoarchaeological study of the Chavos area and the examination of the geomorphology, sedimentology, and stratigraphy of the excavated sectors identified two superimposed natural fills. These fills define two distinct stratigraphical and chronological horizons, namely a thick and coarse reddish-brown sterile colluvial fill with cobbles and boulders emerging at the depth of -2.5 m (water flow) and an overlying red fill with fine sedimentation  (debris flow). The deeper colluvial fill was probably formed by recurring overflows and extensive flooding of the Chavos river, as indicated by the depth of sedimentation and the horizontal grading of the deposited material. The soil micromorphology of this fill reveals traces of ground surface morphogenesis, which means that it must have been exposed to the elements and subject to severe weathering for a prolonged period of time before it was gradually covered by various structures in the Mycenaean period. In the 13^th century BC, a strong retaining wall was built alongside the western bank of Chavos following its N-S orientation in order to delineate and narrow down the riverbed, contain the river flow, and protect the adjacent flat land to the west from recurring overflows and flood. This facilitated the spatial re-organization of landscape to accommodate the expansion of the south sector of the Lower Town. The Chavos river was successfully contained, as documented by the deposition of finer sedimentation in later fills and the absence of rocks and boulders therein. The strong water flow was controlled by a water dam which created an artificial pond further south securing water supply for irrigation. All these hydrologic modifications and their relative environmental impact aimed at a drastic transformation and spatial re-organization of the surrounding landscape, thus serving a systematic modification of farmland to domestic, industrial, and burial space. Systematic geoelectrical prospection combined with targeted deep-core drilling and soil micro-morphology further defined the paleogeomorphology of the area and detected ancient hydrologic, landscape, and environmental changes. The decline of Mycenae and gradual abandonment or destruction of the Mycenaean engineering projects (terraces, retaining walls, dams) in the early post-Mycenaean period resulted in the gradual accumulation of a natural red fill, a buildup of soil caused by slope erosion and river overflow over a long period of time (debris flow). This natural fill upon which (or cutting therein) the later Geometric and Archaic structures were founded, emerges at the same depth in the trenches of the excavated sector; therefore, the red fill defines a naturally formed stratigraphical and chronological horizon which seals, protects, and separates the underlying Mycenaean structures and contexts from the overlying superimposed Geometric and Archaic layers, thus connecting the excavated contexts and unifying the stratification of the whole site.

 The final results of the geophysical and geoarchaeological survey are currently publication-ready in a collective volume (forthcoming in 2014).

           Unearthing the Lower Town

The systematic excavation of the Lower Town at Mycenae (2007-) is conducted under the auspices of the Athens Archaeological Society with the generous funding and technical support of Dickinson College, the INSTAP, and the Mycenaean Foundation. The first phase of excavations focused on the South Sector of the settlement, and more specifically on the western part of terraces I/II of the South-West Bank. One acre of the surveyed land was purchased in 2006 with funds from Dickinson College and two more acres were bought in 2011. In the topographical grid of Mycenae, the purchased land falls within grid-squares D4 and E4 (500 × 500m). All the field campaigns so far have targeted the northern part of the purchased land (SWB II), where thirty 5×5m grid squares were excavated yielding substantial structures which had been traced by the geophysical survey with remarkable precision; these include houses, workshops, building complexes, intramural graves, retaining and defensive walls. In general, architectural features and structures of the settlement at Mycenae emerge at the depth of -0.10/0.15 m to the depth of -2.5 m. Their layout and spatial distribution reveal different orientation patterns of chronological significance: Mycenaean buildings in the deeper stratum follow a N-S orientation, parallel to the main northbound road to the citadel, whereas later structures appear to be oriented NW-SE. The Mycenaean structures include a solid and long retaining wall that was possibly connected with a gate (Wall A), and a late Mycenaean/Geometric wall (Wall B and Γ) which may have served as an auxiliary outwork connected with the outer fortification wall of the Lower Town or as a barricade of the Early Iron Age settlement, to judge from its relatively solid construction and size, the presence of an indentation, and the dense distribution of many arrow heads and sling stones in the vicinity of the wall. Mycenaean buildings include Building VII, Building VIII, which is delineated by two solid, well-built walls (Walls Δand E), and an apsidal structure (Building IV) consisting mainly of a solid curved wall which progressively narrows and funnels downwards (3.20 m × 4 m). The apsidal structure was founded directly upon the natural bedrock, which has been carefully hewn to form five successive steps giving access to the bottom of the apsidal structure at a depth of -3 m from ground level. The depth, downward tapering, carved steps, fill sedimentation and wet silt/sandy fills indicating presence of stagnant water in the interior of the apsidal structure corroborate the tentative identification of a cistern or well. The apsidal structure was originally constructed in the late Mycenaean period and continued to be in use as a cistern or well in the following centuries, as indicated by its successive repairs, modifications and extensions, until the Archaic period when it collapsed and finally went out of use, being subsequently filled-in with trash and debris.

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View of the Lower Town of Mycenae (from north)

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Overhead view of excavation team at work

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Trench masters at work

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C. Maggidis (field director) and A. Tentzeris (foreman) at work

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Trench assistants at work

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The Mycenaean remains were eventually filled-in, sealed, and protected from later intrusions by a thick, sterile, natural red fill which accumulated gradually from slope erosion and river overflow as a result of the abandonment or destruction of the Mycenaean infrastructure in the early post-Mycenaean period. Later on, Geometric (10^th-8^th c. BC) and Archaic structures (7^th/6^th c. BC) were founded upon this natural fill (or cutting therein). The most important Geometric structures include a pottery/ivory workshop (Building I) equipped with a cistern (possibly for storage of fine clay), a multi-room house with a courtyard (Building II), which yielded three intramural burials of infants under the floor of Room 4 (G-2, G-3), and two solid circular structures with an inner diameter of 2.5 m abutting the curtailed Wall Γ (Buildings V and VI). Building V was founded upon a Mycenaean building (Building VII), which was embedded in the circular structure to retain and carry its cobbled floor, and, after going out of use, was partially overlaid by an Archaic clay plaster floor. Building V was apparently a silo (granary), used for storing and processing agricultural products, as indicated by its circular ground plan, the discovery of stone tools and grinders, clay loom weights and spools in its interior, and its association with an adjacent and contemporary circular structure of similar use (Building VI). An earlier apsidal structure (Building III) was uncovered below the floor of Room 1 of Building II, consisting of a thin curved wall and an extensive stone layer, which probably formed the floor underlayment of the apsidal building. Building III was founded upon the post-Mycenaean red fill and was sealed by the overlying Middle Geometric Building II, which was founded directly upon its ruins. The apsidal Building III, therefore, should be dated to the Protogeometric (11^th/10^th c. BC) or Early Geometric period (900-850 BC). Finally, abutting high onto the eastern face of Wall B was found a rectangular, rubble-built cist grave (int. dim. 1.75-1.80 m × 0.75-0.95 m) of E-W orientation, cut into the post-Mycenaean fill. The cist grave G-1 (see Middle Geometric Grave G1 image below) was found practically undisturbed: food offerings and remains of funerary meals were found in situ on top of the grave, which contained a single adult burial interred in a contracted position, resting on its right side with the head oriented westwards and facing south. The articulated skeleton of a young woman was well-furnished with an iron pin (found in situ on the right shoulder-blade), an iron ring (found in situ around a phalanx of the right hand), and five clay vases, carefully lined behind the back of the body (two small footed jars, a small pithoid vase, and a pyxis with lid), or placed in front of the body and beside the right hand (one-handled cup). The cist grave is securely dated to the late 9^th century B.C. on the basis of the Middle Geometric Argive pottery and jewelry found in its context. The particular geomagnetic trace of this grave on the geoprospection images is diagnostic of other Geometric graves in the vicinity, where the southern part of the Geometric cemetery of Mycenae must have extended.

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Aerial views of Lower Town of Mycenae: The excavated area, shown above and in following images

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Middle Geometric Grave G-1

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A great number and wide variety of finds have been retrieved so far, including fragments of Mycenaean and Archaic figurines, flint and obsidian blades, flakes, and cores, stone tools, fragments of stone vases, stone cloth weights, seal-stones, beads and pendants, rings, glass shards, metallic objects, coins, lead sheets, iron nails and hooks, lead clamps for pottery mending, ivory objects, clay loom weights and spools, fresco and plaster fragments, color pigments, carbonized wood, animal bones, shell, roof tiles and abundant pottery (mainly Mycenaean, but also Geometric and Archaic). All excavated soil is sifted, and soil from uncontaminated closed contexts or undisturbed sealed layers is water-sieved. Soil samples are systematically collected for soil micromorphology (intact block samples consolidated with resin) and archaeobotanical analysis. The preliminary study of the archaeobotanical material has identified remains of grape pips, olive stones, figs, cereal grains, barley, and pulses. The analysis of animal bones has identified a wide variety of domesticated animals (sheep, goats, cattle and pigs, dogs, donkey) and wild species (wild boar, deer, red deer, hare).

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Grave goods from Middle Geometric Grave G-1

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Sealstones

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Lead clamps and iron nails and hooks

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Arrowheads

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Stone and metal jewelry

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Assessing the Importance of the Lower Town 

The geophysical survey and systematic excavation of the Lower Town at Mycenae (2003-2013) revealed an extensive Mycenaean settlement outside the citadel, which was protected by an outer fortification wall with gates, as well as overlying structures and buildings dating to the Early Iron Age (PG/G houses, workshops, silos, retaining walls, and graves) and the Archaic period, thus establishing for the first time a continuous, well-stratified occupation of Mycenae in all the successive periods from the 13^th century BC to the 6^th century BC. Such strong confirmation of continued presence following the decline of the palatial center of Mycenae and the subsequent political decentralization, economic collapse, and social dissolution, becomes very important, as it complements and reinforces the post-Mycenaean archaeological picture of transition in the Early Iron Age Argolid (Argos, Tiryns, Mycenae, Asine), and substantiates cultural continuity in the region.

The exploration of the lay-out, borders, size, and landscape of the town has radically changed the topography of Mycenae, and offered a better understanding of Mycenaean town planning and urbanization, and of the interaction between town and palace, production and storage, local workshops and trade patterns, ancient economy and environment. The geopolitical location of Mycenae, the commanding position of the fortified citadel, the interaction dynamics between settlement and palace, the spatial organization of the surrounding landscape and related hydrologic modifications, all pose intriguing geological, archaeological and paleoenvironmental questions. The geophysical survey at Mycenae detected patterns of ancient reorganization and transformation of the landscape, including terracing against soil erosion, successive modifications of farmland to domestic, industrial and burial space, deforestation, intensification and extensification of agricultural production, as suggested by archaeobotanical evidence and ensuing alterations of the water sources towards systematic irrigation. Towards an integrated synthesis, it is essential to understand the dynamics of the monuments with the formation/deformation processes of their related landscape ecosystem and their relative environmental impact. Land development, soil and water management, roads and bridges facilitating circulation and access to farmland, spatial organization, property delineation, and protection of land resources are essential parameters of systematic intensification of agriculture necessitated by a centralized economy.  Such public works of grand scale can only be designed and realized by palatial authorities aiming to appropriate ownership and exert political power. Therefore, land development and water management are also means of property claim which effectively transfer ancestral family/clan/community property rights to palatial management, control, and eventually possession, thus transforming not only landscape but also the dynamics of the socio-economic structure (integrative to coercive). All surveys to date suggest that Mycenae may have played a more significant role within the surrounding landscape than was previously thought, which presents an opportunity to redefine one of the most famous sites in all of Greece.

Finally, the geophysical survey and excavation of this world-renowned site has been offering field training to hundreds of undergraduate and graduate students through the D.E.P.A.S. project of Dickinson College, great opportunities for faculty/student collaborative research, doctoral theses, interdisciplinary collaboration and leading scholarship for scholars and researchers from around the world.

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Director C. Maggidis holds artifact after discovery of Geometric Grave

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For more information see the Project website: http://mycenae-excavations.org

Contact information to participate or donate to the project: contact Prof. Chr. Maggidis at [email protected] and (717) 245-1014

All images, unless otherwise noted, are credit Dickinson Excavation Project and Archaeological Survey of Mycenae.

CHRISTOFILIS MAGGIDIS, Ph.D.

C. Roberts Chair, Associate Professor of Archaeology

Department of Archaeology, Dickinson College

President of the Mycenaean Foundation

Assistant to the Director, Mycenae

Director, Geophysical & Archaeological Survey of Glas

Address: Keck Archaeology Lab, P.O. Box 1773, Dickinson College, Carlisle PA 17013

Office tel: (717) 245-1014

E-mail: [email protected]

Personal web-page: http://www.dickinson.edu/~maggidic

Department website: http://www.dickinson.edu/academics/programs/archaeology/

Mycenae website: http://mycenae-excavations.org

Glas website: http://glas-excavations.org

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