El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain: The Site and Its Holocene Archaeological Record

By: Lawrence Guy Straus and Manuel R. González Morales

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Synopsis: Though known as a site since 1903, El Mirón Cave in the Cantabrian Mountains of northern Spain remained unexcavated until a team from the universities of New Mexico and Cantabria began ongoing excavations in 1996. This large, deeply stratified cave allowed the team to apply cutting-edge techniques of excavation, recording, and multidisciplinary analysis in the meticulous study of a site that has become a new reference sequence for the classic Cantabrian region. The excavations uncovered the long history of human occupation of the cave, extending from the end of the Middle Paleolithic, through the Upper Paleolithic, up to the modern era. This volume comprehensively describes the background information on the setting, the site, the chronology, and the sedimentology. It then focuses on the biological and archaeological records of the Holocene levels pertaining to Mesolithic, Neolithic, Chalcolithic, and Bronze Age. Archaeologists, anthropologists, and historians will be drawn to this study and its extensive findings, dated by some seventy-five radiocarbon assays.