Revisiting Hornos de la Peña 100 years after

Abstract

The cave of Hornos de la Peña contained one of the most relevant stratigraphic sequences for the study of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic in the Cantabrian Region, northern Iberia, as well as an important group of Paleolithic rock art. The site was discovered in 1903 and excavated during 1909–1910. Those excavations did not take place in the main hall of the cave because it was already emptied for modern phosphate extraction. At that time, in the preserved deposits, the archeological excavations revealed an interesting sequence with Mousterian, Early Upper Paleolithic, Solutrean and Magdalenian cultural remains. Since then, the site has received little attention owing to the difficulties of interpreting the sequence and the biased nature of the preserved collections. In 2016 and 2017 a limited area of the preserved section was excavated to document its archeological sequence, obtain samples for dating and achieve some insights about the cultural attribution of the identified units and their correlation with Obermaier’s sequence. The results show that there is a coarse correlation between both sequences. More interestingly, this work has revealed the good preservation and interest of the Mousterian occupation, the presence of Early Upper Paleolithic, the indefinite nature of the Solutrean and the existence of a Middle Magdalenian occupation. These results provide new insights about the human presence at the site and allow to incorporate it into the new debates about the Middle and Upper Paleolithic in the Cantabrian Region.