Inferring the role of hominids at Torralba: spatial analysis of original excavation data

Abstract

Torralba has been a key locality for Middle Pleistocene paleoanthropology since its discovery by the Marqués de Cerralbo in the early 1900s. It yielded numerous elephant bones and lithic artifacts, leading to its first interpretation as an elephant kill site, and provoking subsequent studies and debates about that interpretation. After Cerralbo, Torralba was excavated by a multidisciplinary team led by the American paleoanthropologist F. Clark Howell between 1961 and 1963. This work generated a large body of documentation, including maps, photographs, catalogs, drawings, and notes. Here, we present previously unpublished stratigraphic sections and georeferenced and digitalized distribution maps. Combined with newly digitized archival photographs of the original excavations, these resources provide long sought and critically important spatial and stratigraphic positioning of 1,541 bones, 428 artifacts and 1,678 additional stones (among other elements). The work was carried out considering all these elements, discussing their possible stratigraphic attribution through the study of distribution and orientation patterns by applying spatial analysis methods. The results have provided important data regarding the importance of recovering documentation from old excavations and processing it with innovative analytical methods, as well as regarding the formation processes of the deposit that bear directly on previous behavioral inferences and provide valuable data for future studies.