Review of the Acheulean component of the lithic industry from Galería (Atapuerca, Burgos, Spain)

Abstract

The lithic industry of the Galería site at the Atapuerca complex (Burgos), dated to the second half of the Middle Pleistocene, has been interpreted as one of the most remarkable assemblages of the Acheulean technocomplex known in the Iberian Peninsula and southern Europe. It has been considered that the long stratigraphic sequence of the site allows the observation of the evolution of the Acheulean in the second half of the Middle Pleistocene. This proposal has been the subject of a recent review on our part, in which the discontinuous nature of the stratigraphy at Galería is high-lighted, and the possibility of establishing any type of archaeological sequence based on the limited record it contains is negatively valued. The attribution of the archaeological sites at Galería exclusively to the Acheulean techno-complex is also discussed, based on a level-by-level analysis of the representativeness of the published lithic industry. In order to assess the Acheulean attribution in-depth, and to contrast the consistency of the evolutionary trends that have been proposed for this techno-complex through the stratigraphy of Galería, we present here a detailed study of all the artifacts interpreted in previous publications as “LCTs” (handaxes, cleavers and other macro-tools). This work, complementary to our previous review, has been carried out on the collections obtained in the field seasons undertaken in Galería between 1982 and 1996, currently deposited at CENIEH and the Museum of Evolution (Burgos). The conclusions reached corroborate the weak and discontinuous presence of characteristic Acheulean elements in this site, ruling out the possibility of recognizing any type of evolutionary sequence in these materials. Our main conclusion is that the interpretations that propose to see in the industry of Galería as a representative sequence of the European Acheulean which evolves progressively, have no base.