Jesús F. Jordá Pardo

National Distance Education University | UNED · Department of Prehistory and Archaeology

El Cierro Cave (Ribadesella, Asturias, Spain) possesses one of the most complete Upper Palaeolithic stratigraphic sequences in northern Spain. Magdalenian occupations, particularly the lower Magdalenian, are well represented in its full sequence. This article presents the zooarchaeological analysis of the levels Cierro G1, Cierro G and Cierro F, da...

The stratigraphy and materials from a survey carried out in 1994 and 1995 in a rock-shelter in Tamajón (southwestern Iberian Central Range) are studied here. The Pleistocene deposits were generated by high-energy channeled fluvial flows and dense currents of debris flow and mud flow type. The recovered lithic industry, created mainly in low-quality...

El Olivo Cave (Pruvia de Arriba, Llanera, Asturias, Spain) is a small karst cave located in the Aboño River basin and formed in the Cretaceous limestone of the Mesozoic cover of the Canta-brian Mountains (north of the Iberian Peninsula). It contains an important upper Pleistocene sedimentary, archaeological, and paleontological record, with abundan...

El Olivo Cave (Pruvia de Arriba, Llanera, Asturias, Spain) is a small karst cave located in the Aboño River basin and formed in the Cretaceous limestone of the Mesozoic cover of the Cantabrian Mountains (north of the Iberian Peninsula). It contains an important upper Pleistocene sedimen-tary, archaeological and paleontological record, with abundant...

In the context of our current studies on prehistoric art of Moro and Ladrones/Pretinas Caves, located in the north shore of the Strait of Gibraltar, southernmost Iberian Peninsula, it was necessary to revisit the interpretations that various researchers proposed for this region for more than a century. In the present article we offer a short review...

La Mina is one of three sites, along with Cueva Millán and La Ermita, located in the middle course of the Arlanza river. La Mina was excavated for the first time in 2006 and three test pits were carried out. In one of them, evidence of two Palaeolithic occupations was identified and several remains of woolly rhinoceros were recovered. Amino acid ra...

The Sella River valley (Asturias, Spain) has been and is currently a benchmark in Palaeolithic discoveries and research. The location and the number of archaeological sites along its orography certify a significant human presence in the valley throughout all of Prehistory. The mobility that these human groups exercised and developed along the fluvi...

In the mid-1990s, Moro Cave rock-shelter became a key site to understand the rock art phenomenon in southernmost Iberia, as the discovery of Solutrean engravings settled former arguments about the presence of Upper Palaeolithic art in the region. Since then, discontinuous and unsystematic interventions in this site not only left many questions unan...

Located in the westernmost sector of the Pyrenees, the Grotte d'Isturitz opens in the carbonate massif of the Gaztelu hill, forming part of the Isturitz-Oxocelhaya-Erberua karstic system. Known since ancient times by the inhabitants of the Erberua valley and mentioned in texts since the 17th century, the cavity contains evidence of human activity f...

En marzo y abril de 1968 el Grupo de Montaña Torreblanca exploró el complejo del Pozu’l Ramu en el macizo kárstico de Ardines realizando el descubrimiento de los grabados y pinturas rupestres paleolíticas de la que, finalmente, recibiría el nombre de cueva de Tito Bustillo. A finales de 1968 apareció el primer trabajo científico sobre las represent...

Over the last three decades, more than a dozen sites with Pleistocene palaeoflood deposits in river valleys of the central Iberian Peninsula (basins of the Duero and Tagus rivers and their tributaries) have been located, described, dated and interpreted. Some palaeoflood sediments were deposited next to, or within, Neanderthal occupation sites and,...

Por medio del análisis geoarqueológico y arqueométrico se ha podido establecer una aproximación a la vinculación entre los materiales líticos arqueológicos y los afloramientos geológicos durante el Pleistoceno en la comarca del Guadalteba.

San Quirce is an open‐air archaeological site situated on a fluvial terrace in the Duero basin (Palencia, northern Iberia). This paper presents new and consistent chronologies obtained for the sedimentary sequence using post‐infrared infrared stimulated luminescence (pIR‐IR) dating of K‐feldspars and single‐grain thermally transferred optically sti...

The Mediterranean coast of Spain is marked by several clusters of Palaeolithic sites: to the south of the Pyrenees, in the area around the Ebro River, in the central part, and on the south coast, one of the southernmost regions in Europe. The number of sites is small compared with northern Iberia, but like that region, the Palaeolithic occupations...

Cova Rosa is one of the main Upper Paleolithic sites in eastern Asturias. Discovered and excavated by Professor Francisco Jordá Cerdá in the middle of the last century and later in the 70s, it presents a sequence made up of deposits from the Solutrean and Magdalenian, to which recent investigations allow the addition of remains of a Mesolithic shel...

En este artículo se hace una puesta al día sobre la información disponible relativa a las excavaciones arqueológicas efectuadas en la Cueva de El Cierro. Está focalizado en las intervenciones llevadas a cabo con posterioridad a la primera excavación en el yacimiento, realizada por el profesor Francisco Jordá Cerdá en 1959, tanto las efectuadas po...

El valle del Sella acogió grupos neandertales durante el Paleolítico medio y la transición al Paleolítico superior. Durante el Paleolítico superior funcionó como un territorio homogéneo, con campamentos base en la costa y yacimientos de ocupación temporal y utilidad logística al interior. Así se muestra en los yacimientos del curso medio, próximos...

Los Azules Cave is located in Contranquil, municipality of Cangas de Onís (Asturias). It is placed in the southern slope of the Llueves Mount. It was discovered in 1971, and excavated by Juan A. Fernández Tresguerres between 1973 and 1992. It is one of the most important archaeological cave sites in Cantabrian Region. Furthermore, Los Azules is the...

Discovered in 1988, the archaeological site of the rock shelter of Jarama VI (Valdesotos, Guadalajara) was excavated in the last third of the 20th century. It contains an archeosedimentary sequence with musterienses levels and bone remains of Homo neanderthalensis with an age greater than 50 ka (Kehl et al., 2013) and an interstratified fluvial dep...

The Geosite of Jarama VI is a rock shelter containing a lithostratigraphic sequence formed by five Upper Pleistocene sedimentary units, three of wich present archaeological remains of the Middle Palaeolithic with an age older than 50 ka BP. A bone of Homo neanderthalensis has been found in one of those units. In order to preserve all the analogical...

Los yacimientos de Andalucía oriental constituyen la facies regional más meridional del Magdaleniense europeo. A los sitios costeros, conocidos desde principios del siglo XX, se han añadido una serie de sitios localizados en el surco intrabético que serán la base de discusión de este trabajo. Esta dispersión muestra una amplia distribución geográfi...

The sites of Eastern Andalusia constitute the southernmost regional facies of the European Magdalenian. In addition to the coastal sites, which have been known since the beginning of the 20th century, a number of sites located in the Intrabaetic Basin have been added, which will be the basis for discussion in this work. This dispersion shows a wide...

Four excavations have been performed at the archaeological site of Cova Rosa (Asturias, Cantabrian Spain): three of them in the second half of last century and the other in this decade. Although little of the archaeological material found in those excavations has been published, here we attempt the stratigraphic correlation of sections revealed by...

El Esquilleu cave has one of the most complete Middle Paleolithic stratigraphies of northern Iberia with a complete chronological framework almost continuous from the beginning of MIS3. The complete analysis of the materials including the last section of the sequence corresponding to the last chronological interval of the occupation in the region s...

La Cueva de Nerja (Maro, témino municipal de Nerja, provincia de Málaga, S de España) contiene un importante yacimiento arqueológico en la zona de su antigua entrada (salas de la Torca, de la Mina y del Vestíbulo) cuya cronología se encuentra comprendida entre ca. 25.000 y ca. 3.000 años BP, secuencia que cubre el Pleistoceno superior final y gran...

During the course of the excavations of the San Quirce open-air archaeological site in Spain, an unusual negative structure was identified in the Holocene level dated ca. sixth millennium cal BC. A fire pit alongside a single post-hole and intense fire-burning activity was recorded. Yet, the most striking feature of the structure is the absence of...

The present work approaches the chronology of the Iron Age at the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula from the analysis of 457 dates 14C from 76 archaeological sites of the Iron Age. From these, a radiocarbon periodization is established that places the hillforts and other sites of this period on the calendrical scale.

Cueva de Nerja has provided a diversified assemblage of birds. In this work the avian bones recovered at the Upper Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic levels in the excavations led by F. Jordá Cerdá is analyzed. The identification of 11 orders, including 14 families and 16 taxa, allows to link their variability with the paleoclimatology and pale...

Los resultados de las excavaciones realizadas entre 1968 y 1984 en la Cova de Hort de Cortés- Volcán del Faro quedaron limitados a identificar materiales solutrenses, magdalenienses y neolíticos-calcolíticos. Una lectura crítica de la Memoria de excavaciones, publicada en 2003, permitió plantear la posibilidad de la presencia de ocupaciones anterio...

The excavation of the Volcán del Faro site (Cullera, Valencia) did not live up to the expectations created after the discovery of the perforated staff. The prospect of a new Palaeolithic sequence, close to that of Parpalló (Gandia, Valencia), brought with it the possibility of obtaining new palaeoenvironmental, chronostratigraphic and archaeologica...

En ocasiones, los hallazgos más simples resultan sorprenden-tes, aunque sean esperables. Siempre se ha aceptado que el uso de materiales tan frági-les como la piel, la madera o las fibras vegetales debieron de ser importantes durante el Paleolítico. Elaborar prendas de protección y abrigo-desde calzado a gorros-, recipientes para el almacenamiento...

Available in: https://lupinepublishers.com/anthropological-and-archaeological-sciences/pdf/JAAS.MS.ID.000150.pdf. We think on the current role of Geoarcheology. It has seemed to us that sharing our point of view on this matter could help to encourage the debate on a scientific dield that, like it or not is still a budding discipline. We defend tha...

In this study we present evidence of braided plant fibres and basketry imprints on clay recovered from Coves de Santa Maira, a Palaeolithic-Mesolithic cave site located in the Mediterranean region of Spain. The anatomical features of these organic fibre remains were identified in the archaeological material and compared with modern Stipa tenacissim...

Located at the center of the Cantabrian coast in a sedimentary terrace currently at the sea shore, the site of Bañugues (Gozón, Asturias) is one of the key places for studying the first settlements of the Iberian North. In the present work, we show the results of the geoarchaeological study undertaken on the bay of Bañugues and on the stratigraphic...

The work undertaken at the Jarama VI site (Valdesotos, Guadalajara, Spain) in the 1990s resulted in the recovery of thousands of archeological remains from the three Pleistocene sedimentary units of this cavity. Prior to the systematic analysis of the lithic material and the reception of new geochronological data, it had been suggested that the upp...

El Cierro Cave possesses one of the few sequences in SW Europe in which archaeological levels cover the transition from the late Pleistocene to the early Holocene. Information contributed by the palynological and anthracological studies indicates that this transition was marked by a steady expansion of broadleaf woodland and a reduction in herbaceo...

Fish remains of three sectors of the Iberian Mediterranean coastline are analysed. The data show exploitation in fresh and marine waters and biases in the preservation of fish bones from Solutrean coastal sites. We expect a major part of the evidence of human exploitation of the marine environment to be flooded today, because there are sectors with...

The archaeological site of Cova Rosa (Sardéu, Ribadesella, Asturias) was excavated in 1958 and 1959 by Francisco Jordá Cerdá, professor of Prehistory at the University of Salamanca, who documented three layers (2, 3 and 4) that he ascribed to the Magdalenian and a further three layers (6, 7 and 8) attributed to the Solutrean. They were separated by...

During the Late GlacialeEarly Holocene transition Southern Iberia has an extensive record of Palaeolithic coastal sites, wich have been preserved due thanks to the morphology of the continental shelf. This is was a period with rapid palaeoclimatic oscillations and changes in sea level. However, the sites show an apparent continuity in technology an...

During the course of the excavations of the San Quirce open-air archaeological site in Spain, an unusual negative structure was identified in the Holocene level dated ca. sixth millennium cal BC. A fire pit alongside a single post-hole and intense fire-burning activity was recorded. Yet, the most striking feature of the structure is the absence of...

The Geosite of Jarama VI is a rock shelter containing a lithostratigraphic sequence formed by five Upper Pleistocene sedimentary units, three of wich present archaeological remains of the Middle Palaeolithic with an age older than 50 ka BP and even a bone remain of Homo neanderthalensis. In order to preserve all this analog information of this Geos...

The Mousterian site of Jarama VI (Guadalajara, Spain) has three archaeological levels corresponding to the final Middle Palaeolithic. Taphonomic and zooarchaeological analyses have determined important changes in the functionality of the site in relation to the species consumed and the nutrients that were sought. The first occupations consisted of...

The occupation of the Iberian Peninsula during the Upper Palaeolithic is mainly known from archaeological sites located in the Cantabrian and Mediterranean regions. Numerous sites have been excavated in these two regions when few sites are found in the interior of the peninsula. Several authors explain this scarcity of sites, in the inner region du...

Cova Rosa is an archaeological site in Asturias, Spain, excavated by Francisco Jordá Cerdá in 1958, 1959 and 1964. Later, the same archaeologist and Alejandro Gómez Fuentes carried out an excavation from 1975 to 1979. They documented two levels, named Cova Rosa A and Cova Rosa B. The archaeological material resulting from this excavation has remain...

The dominance of red deer in Magdalenian records in Cantabrian Spain is a well-studied issue. Given the great accumulations of this species in those deposits, researchers have offered diverse interpretations of the phenomenon, related to ecology, orography or ethology. However, fewer papers carry out comparative intra-site analysis, which is able t...

El Cierro Cave contains an archaeosedimentary record of the Upper Pleistocene and Early Holocene that starts with a Middle Palaeolithic level, followed by a complete sequence of the Upper Paleolithic, and ends with two levels of shell middens dated from the Azilian to the Mesolithic. The stratigraphic sequence consists of fourteen levels grouped in...

The aim of this paper is to offer a chronological and paleoecological context of the last hunter-gatherer societies in the cantabrian region. Bayesian chronological model has been used to examine the radiocarbon available dates to understand these periods and the environment of those moments. The changes in the environment like the modifications of...

Celso GARCIA Lluís GÓMEZ-­PUJOL Enrique MORÁN-­TEJEDA Ramon J. BATALLA (Eds.)

sciencesconf.org:uispp2018:182760

This presentation offers new information about the remains of marine invertebrates (mol-luscs and crustaceans) from two sites with late Pleistocene levels in the Province of Malaga (southeast Spain): Mina Chamber in Nerja Cave (Maro) and Victoria Cave (Rincón de la Victoria). The mollusc assemblages, from Levels 15 and 16 at Nerja and the shell-mid...

Jarama VI is located on the NW edge of the Guadalajara province (Castilla{La Mancha, Spain). It is a rock shelter partially filled up by sediments which were excavated between 1989 and 1994. The archaeological excavation shows a lithostratigraphic sequence formed by three Pleistocene sedimentary units (Jordá 2007) with thousands of archaeological r...

Traditionally, the Iberian Peninsula has been considered to be a “land of rabbits”, a notion reinforced through the frequent appearance of these animals throughout the Palaeolithic on Mediterranean sites. However, the Cantabrian coast has shown a different pattern, with rabbits being scarce or exceptional at most Northern peninsular sites, with onl...

The archaeological sequence of the Palaeolithic site of La Güelga apparently shows an interstratification of Aurignacian between the Mousterian and Châtelperronian layers, a sequence which disagrees with the stratigraphic model for the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in SW-Europe. We analyzed the witness section of the interior sector in ar...

El Cierro Cave (Fresno, Ribadesella, Asturias) is a karst cavity located in the West bank of the Sella river and developed in the Carboniferous limestones of the Asturian Massif of the Cantabrian Range (Northern Iberian Peninsula). This cave contains an important sedimentary, archaeological and palaeontological record of the Upper Pleistocene and E...

La cueva de El Cierro (Ribadesella, Asturias) es una cavidad kárstica situada en la margen oeste del río Sella y desarrollada en las calizas carboníferas del Macizo Asturiano de la Cordillera Cantábrica (norte de la Península Ibérica), que contiene un importante registro sedimentario, arqueológico y paleontológico del Pleistoceno superior y Holocen...

Geoarqueología, entre las Ciencias de la Tierra y la Historia contiene una muestra representativa de la investigación geoarqueológica llevada a cabo en España o por equipos y proyectos liderados por investigadores nacionales durante los últimos años. Este número monográfico del Boletín Geológico Minero es fruto de la iniciativa de su comité editori...

Radiocarbon dating is a useful tool for establishing chronological frameworks in archaeological contexts, reaching the category of “absolute” value. In the case of the ancient Neolithic, the selection of singular short-lived samples of domestic species or remains of Homo sapiens in Neolithic contexts seemed a sufficient filter to define more precis...

During the Late Glacial-Early Holocene transition Southern Iberia has an extensive record of Palaeolithic coastal sites, wich have been preserved due thanks to the morphology of the continental shelf. This is was a period with rapid palaeoclimatic oscillations and changes in sea level. However, the sites show an apparent continuity in technology an...

The exploitation of ungulates in the Cantabrian region during the Upper Palaeolithic is characterized by the appearance of progressively specialized hunting strategies, especially during the Magdalenian. This specialization focused on either Iberian ibex or red deer, depending on environmental or topographic features. Red deer, for instance, was hu...

El Cierro Cave (Asturias, Northern Spain) has been a key site in the regional periodization of the Upper Palaeolithic in the Cantabrian region since its excavation by Jordá-Cerdá in the late 1950s. Lithic and bone artefacts from the Lower Magdalenian layers in this cave have been studied by several scholars from a typological standpoint, discussing...

In this paper we present evidence of anthropophagic behaviour amongst hunter-gatherer groups of the Mediterranean Mesolithic. Thirty human remains have been found in the Mesolithic levels of the Santa Maira Caves. As well as describing the anthropogenic marks identified, this paper contextualizes them within the archaeological context and subsisten...

The use of bone as fuel has been already documented in some sites dated to the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic. They contribute to a longer combustion time due to their durability; consequently, they are useful to reduce the need for firewood, a good advantage in open palaeoenvironmental contexts with limited arboreal vegetation. The use of bones as...

La Güelga cave is located at the bottom of a mountain valley in the Eastern part of Asturias (Northern Spain), 186 m above sea level and 15 km far away from the coast. It currently comprises a group of caves that were occupied during the Middle and Upper Paleolithic periods (MP and UP respectively). In recent years, we have studied the levels of La...

Coímbre is one of the few Gravettian sites the middle-western part of Cantabria. It is one of the most interesting sites for the analysis of the Gravettian close to the boundary of its western expansion in Europe. Zooarchaeological and taphonomical study of the faunal and archaeobotanical remains and the lithic industry and the interpretation of it...

Carnivore damage on Neanderthal fossils is a much more common taphonomic modification than previously thought. Its presence could have different explanations, including predatory attacks or scavenging scenarios, which are both situations with important implications concerning Neanderthal behavior. In the present paper, we analyze several Neandertha...