Lower Paleolithic artifacts preserved on the lower fluvial terraces of Minho River near Melgaço, NW of Iberia: diversity and chronology

Abstract

Lower Palaeolithic industries are known in the Lower Minho River, Northwest of Iberia, for about 100 years. The first findings of Acheulean age were collected scattered along the river valley. Since the 1960s, attention was paid to an important Acheulean site of the right bank – Gándaras de Budiño, Galicia, Spain – with controversial chronology. New research has connected such site to the Middle Pleistocene and more recently new important Acheulean sites were discovered in the same river bank. In the last three years, archaeological work carried out in the left bank of the Minho River (Portugal) has also allowed to (ACHO QUE LEVA UM "TO") the identification of new Palaeolithic sites, generally associated to ancient river deposits, also dating from the Middle Pleistocene.Its characteristiclarge cutting stone tools include different types of bifaces, most of them made from quartzite pebbles or wide flakes removed from large cores, and cleavers, as well as other artefacts such as cores and flakes, sometimes retouched. In 2016, 2017 and 2018 multidisciplinary research was carried out at Carvalhas (municipality of Melgaço, Portugal), an archaeological site located in the surface of a river terrace, with the top 20 m above the current river bed. Such research involved the excavation of three different geoarchaeological contexts, the analysis of the local geomorphology and the sedimentary architecture of the terrace, and OSL dating. Preliminary results suggest that the Acheulean assemblages are connect to an ancient river channel or meander, and toa colluvium/slope deposit, and were produced between c. 255 Ky and c. 335 Ky. Another assemblage, with a significant amount of flakes and associated to a deposit with different features, may date from a later period and be related eventually to the Middle Palaeolithic (no dates available for this context). In conclusion, the abundance and diversity of the lithic stone tools from Carvalhas attest to the human presence at the NW of Iberian Peninsula during the Middle Pleistocene.