Archaeological survey nowadays: projects, methods and results. A case of Sierra de Atapuerca (Burgos, Spain)

Abstract

As we all know, archaeological surveys have progressed from a secondary discipline to a solid, consistent working method that is evolving in step with the goals of prehistoric research. Almost 60 years have passed since New Archaeology began to point out the importance of archaeological surveys for the study of prehistoric settlement patterns, and many meetings and communications have discussed this issue. Now, it is not only individual sites that matter. In order to understand the lives of human groups, we know we also have to study their interactions with other sites and the environment in which they operated, i.e., their territory. In this context, we began a survey aimed at documenting all the prehistoric settlements in Sierra de Atapuerca and its environs that had been preserved. A full-cover, high intensity archaeological survey was conducted in a 314 km2 area (Navazo 2006). The study area was defined by a 10 km radius circle centred on one of the excavated caves in Sierra de Atapuerca, Cueva Mayor. A total of eight surveys were conducted over a 5 year period, structured on the basis of the natural areas in the zone defined with geoarchaeological methodology (Navazo et al. 2005). In all, 181 archaeological sites were located. For the purposes of the in-depth study, we distinguished the 31 Middle Paleolithic sites (Navazo et al. 2011; Navazo and Carbonell, i.p). These sites were studied from different perspectives, focusing on raw materials (Navazo et al., 2008), lithic industry, stratigraphy, geoarchaeology, etc. The results are presented in this communication in order to discuss two issues that remain outstanding after such a large-scale survey: 1. There seem to be as many surveys as research projects, and indeed as many methodologies as there are surveyed natural areas. From the experience of our work, we wish to defend/support the unification of methodologies. 2. Lack of a global vocabulary. Terms such as records, landscape, site, location, etc., mean different things to different authors and studies. Additionally, in order to discuss the feasibility of one method or another, we will design different survey methods for our study area to assess the suitability of each one with a view to ascertaining the settlement patterns of prehistoric groups. The issues that we share in this communication haunt us from our own experience. We will explain our research goals, methodology and results as an introduction to the discussion of the two proposed issues.