The sediment at the end of the tunnel: Geophysical research to locate the Pleistocene entrance of Gruta da Companheira (Algarve, Southern Portugal)

The southern Iberian Peninsula is a key area for understanding the timing and patterns of the Middle-to-Upper Palaeolithic transition. Recently, the excavation and study of new sites have provided new insights on this topic. The aim of this paper is to introduce Cueva del Arco, a site complex featuring distinct caves and rock shelters. Cueva del Arco is located at a short distance from the Almadenes gorge (Cieza, Spain) and preserves both Middle and Upper Palaeolithic deposits and assemblages, as well as rock art. Despite being known since the 1990s for its Palaeolithic rock art, systematic fieldwork was never undertaken at the site until recently. We here report the first results of a research programme that includes the systematic excavation of several cavities belonging to the Cueva del Arco complex, focusing on the location and context of the site, its stratigraphy and chronology, and site formation. Research at the site is still ongoing, but preliminary results suggest that the data from Cueva del Arco will provide new clues to the current debate on the transition from Neanderthals to anatomically modern humans in southern Europe.

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First Data from the Prehistoric Site Complex of Cueva del Arco (Murcia, Spain)

Lerma

Monroig

Armellini

et al. 2023

J Paleo Arch

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Comparing extraction method efficiency for high-throughput palaeoproteomic bone species identification

Mylopotamitaki,

Harking,

Taurozzi

et al. 2023

Sci Rep

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High-throughput proteomic analysis of archaeological skeletal remains provides information about past fauna community compositions and species dispersals in time and space. Archaeological skeletal remains are a finite resource, however, and therefore it becomes relevant to optimize methods of skeletal proteome extraction. Ancient proteins in bone specimens can be highly degraded and consequently, extraction methods for well-preserved or modern bone might be unsuitable for the processing of highly degraded skeletal proteomes. In this study, we compared six proteomic extraction methods on Late Pleistocene remains with variable levels of proteome preservation. We tested the accuracy of species identification, protein sequence coverage, deamidation, and the number of post-translational modifications per method. We find striking differences in obtained proteome complexity and sequence coverage, highlighting that simple acid-insoluble proteome extraction methods perform better in highly degraded contexts. For well-preserved specimens, the approach using EDTA demineralization and protease-mix proteolysis yielded a higher number of identified peptides. The protocols presented here allowed protein extraction from ancient bone with a minimum number of working steps and equipment and yielded protein extracts within three working days. We expect further development along this route to benefit large-scale screening applications of relevance to archaeological and human evolution research.

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The Becoming of a Prehistoric Landscape: Palaeolithic Occupations and Geomorphological Processes at Lojanik (Serbia)

Lesage

Barbieri

Galfi

et al. 2022

Land

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Accomplishing long-term plans to harvest and modify natural resources has been a crucial skill for the survival of our species since early Prehistory. Research on this first step of production mostly focuses on the provenience study of lithic artifacts uncovered at archaeological sites, using petrographic and geochemical analyses to correlate the artifacts with potential geological outcrops. Although fundamental for understanding key aspects of landscape use and mobility, regional raw material economy, and extraction technology, Palaeolithic raw material sources have been less intensively investigated, as they are often difficult to locate and challenging to tackle with traditional archaeological approaches. Lojanik in the Central Balkans is one of the largest Prehistoric quarrying areas known in Europe, showing numerous lithic raw material outcrops exploited from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Chalcolithic periods, over an area of 18 hectares. In this paper, we present the results from our renewed research program in this region. Combining airborne LIDAR mapping, geomorphological and archaeological survey, and techno-typological analysis of lithic artifacts, we were able to reconstruct the geomorphological evolution of the landscape and its use by prehistoric societies.

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The sediment at the end of the tunnel: Geophysical research to locate the Pleistocene entrance of Gruta da Companheira (Algarve, Southern Portugal)

Cited by 4 publications

References 62 publications

First Data from the Prehistoric Site Complex of Cueva del Arco (Murcia, Spain)

First Data from the Prehistoric Site Complex of Cueva del Arco (Murcia, Spain)

Comparing extraction method efficiency for high-throughput palaeoproteomic bone species identification

The Becoming of a Prehistoric Landscape: Palaeolithic Occupations and Geomorphological Processes at Lojanik (Serbia)

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