Unravelling an essential archive for the European Pleistocene. The human occupation in the Manzanares Valley (Madrid, Spain) throughout nearly 800,000 years

Abstract

Since 1862, one of the largest accumulations of Palaeolithic sites of Europe has been found in the Manzanares valley (Madrid, Spain). Virtually all the fluvial deposits preserved from the Lower Pleistocene to the end of the Late Pleistocene contain remains of human occupation, that date to the Lower Palaeolithic ("core and flake assemblages" and Acheulean), Ancient Middle Palaeolithic and Middle Palaeolithic, as well as Upper Palaeolithic (Solutrean and perhaps Aurignacian). A good deal of these assemblages lacked a timeframe sufficiently delimited to be integrated within the European Pleistocene general framework. In this paper we provide, for first time, a geochronological context to several tens of sites. Together with those sites for which this information was previously available, an actual analysis of information will be possible, and will allow research on: the variability on the behaviour of human groups throughout 800 ka in the same geographic framework; human groups with flake and core industry during the first half of the Middle Pleistocene; the Acheulean technocomplex between MIS 13/11 and MIS 7/6; the coexistence between the Acheulean and the Middle Palaeolithic towards the end of the Middle Pleistocene; the peopling dynamics of Neanderthal groups in the open air; the end of the Middle Palaeolithic and therefore late Neanderthal survival; the human occupation in the interior of the Iberian Peninsula during the Late Pleniglacial; and territory management during the Solutrean period.