Bruno Gómez de Soler

IPHES Catalan Institute for Human Palaeoecology and Social Evolution | IPHES · Geoarchaeology

The taphonomic study of two complete and anatomically connected individuals of Tapirus arvernensis from the Pliocene site of Camp dels Ninots (Caldes de Malavella, Spain) strengthens the attribution to a konservat-Lagerstätte deposit. The macroscopic analysis showed the absence of weathering, predation marks, and scarce superficial modification. Di...

Meaningful citizen participation throughout the development of research projects has increased the societal impact of science. Co-creation processes promote a more significant societal impact by aligning research with societal needs. In recent years, essential advances in citizen participation in science have been identified. However, there are sti...

In 2014, an anthropic accumulation of chert material was discovered in La Guinardera area, at the southwest of the Sant Martí de Tous town (Barcelona, NE Iberian Peninsula). In 2018 a first archaeological intervention was carried out in two locations: La Guinardera and La Guinardera Nord. After the fieldworks, these two accumulations were interpret...

This paper presents the limestone reduction sequences documented in levels M and Ob at Abric Romaní from a technological point of view. At level M, a recurrent knapping system has been identified, resulting in the frequency of pseudo-Levallois blanks. At archaeolevel Ob, the presence of Levallois methods are observed in association with this knappi...

Book of Abstracts of the 13th ISKM conference that took place in Tarragona in virtual form

Camp dels Ninots is a mixed hard-soft maar-diatreme located in the Catalan Volcanic Zone (NE of Iberia), in which intra-maar lake sediments have preserved one of the most remarkable Pliocene fossil records in Europe. Geophysical surveys combined with the geological map and 11 boreholes, including two new continuous intra-crater drill cores, have en...

The sedimentary record of the maar lake succession at Camp dels Ninots (Pliocene, NE Spain) reflects mineralogical shifts that correlate with orbitally forced climate changes. X-ray powder diffraction was obtained from a 47 m-long core collected from a borehole drilled in the centre of the paleolake. The results show compositional variations in ter...

The Montmaneu Formation is located at the NE margin of the Ebro Basin (Catalonia, Spain), and is dated to the Rupelian (Lower Oligocene). It is formed by 120 m of light grey stratified limestones with bedded-nodular chert, the Panadella chert, associated with the La Segarra lacustrine system. This chert is macroscopically characterized by very fine...

This study represents the first integrated approach to the lithic raw materials exploited by the Neanderthals that occupied the Abric Romaní site (NE Iberia). Focusing on chert as the most abundant raw material (>80% of the assemblages), we determine the potential procurement areas and the mobility patterns. Geo-archaeological surveys within a radi...

The phenomenon of microlithism continues to be one of the most interesting topics in the prehistoric archaeology of the Middle Palaeolithic period because it is key to understanding the technology and cultural and economic organisation of Neanderthal societies. The aim of this research is to characterise small-flake industries based on two archaeol...

Isolating the various occupational events in the Palaeolithic record is hard work, because the remains from different occupations commonly overlap, creating archaeological palimpsests. We can differentiate two different types of palimpsest: vertical and horizontal ones. These two types are very important for identifying and defining short-or long-t...

Hunter-gatherers have a nomadic lifestyle and move frequently on the landscape based on the seasonal distribution of resources. During these displacements, carrying capacities are limited, and the composition of the transported gear is generally planned ahead of the activity to perform. During the Pleistocene, prehistoric hunter-gatherers faced sim...

A use-wear analysis was carried out on a specific mobile toolkit belonging to level M of the Middle Paleolithic site of Abric Romaní (Barcelona, Spain), which is dated to MIS 3, between 51 and 55 Ka BP. In an environment rich in local and regional chert sources and in a technological context marked by expedient behavior, a set of flakes, which also...

Short-term human occupations could occur in very distinct places and be related to very different behaviours. The low number of items left by the human groups in these sites, usually, generates discrete assemblages, which often are difficult to disentangle. In the European Middle Palaeolithic, short-term human occupations in caves and rock-shelters...

After deconstructing the palimpsest of level O, we present a cross-disciplinary study on a short occupation of the Abric Romaní rock shelter conducted by means of an analysis of the record of archaeo-level Oa, a Middle Palaeolithic assemblage dated to ca. 54 Ka BP by U/Th series. In this study, we present the steps we took to puzzle out the palimps...

Mobility strategies of Neanderthal groups are studied through the characterization and analysis of archaeological sites and traditionally compared to the types of settlements present-day hunter-gatherer groups, based on their mobility strategies. The faunal record of level P of Abric Romaní is a unique source of information for analysing the foragi...

Free download at: https://books.openedition.org/cths/6212?lang=es

The intrasite mobility of lithic artifacts is one of the most relevant issues that can be approached from the spatial study of refitting. In many sites, researchers have determined that some artifacts were abandoned at a considerable distance from the place where they were produced. Once natural causes of a post-depositional nature are ruled out, t...

The Late Pliocene is a very interesting period as climate deteriorated from a warm optimum at ca. 3.3-3.0 Ma to a progressive climate cooling. Simultaneously, the Medi-terranean area witnessed the establishment of the Med-iterranean-type seasonal precipitation rhythm (summer drought). These important climate changes produced significant vegetation...

Raw material provenance and procurement studies are an essential research line to infer landscape exploitation, mobility dynamics and territorial management among prehistoric hunter-gatherer groups. This paper proposes an original and intuitive method, the chert abundance ratio, aimed at quantifying lithic resource occurrence in the landscape while...

maar, silicification, silica, opal, hydrothermal system

The intra-site spatial patterns of lithic artefacts and their density are traditionally used in Prehistory as proxies for activity areas and social organisation of past human groups. This approach allows identifying domestic units, inferring number of co-resident, understanding site function and duration of occupation. These topics are especially i...

Isolate different occupational events in the Palaeolithic record is a hard work, because the overlapping of the remains from different occupations is very common, and this phenomenon creates archaeological palimpsests. We can differentiate two types of palimpsest: the vertical and the horizontal ones. These two types are very important to identify...

In the last decades, we have witnessed crucial advances to describe and explain the variability of Mousterian lithic productions across Europe. This variability has important implications in terms of adaptive responses at the environmental and cultural changes that Neanderthals faced between ca. 250-30 kyr BP. The production of small tools is part...

The field trip visits La Crosa de Sant Dalmai maar volcano, the largest maar crater of the Iberian Peninsula, formed during the Pleistocene; the basaltic tuff-ring of El Puig d’Adri and its phreatomagmatic deposits, including basaltic ignimbrites; and the open fossil excavation in lacustrine sediments of the Camp dels Ninots Pliocene maar crater.

Ramification is the term used to classify branched productive sequences in which a functional item (the flake) was exploited as a productive item (the core). This technological behaviour was present in Europe and the Levant beginning in the Lower and Early Middle Palaeolithic, but ramified productions were intensely developed in the Late Middle Pal...

The Pliocene Camp dels Ninots maar volcanic lake (La Selva Basin, NE Spain) was filled with lacustrine freshwater sediments. A drilling campaign from 2015 permitted to study the lacustrine succession as well as the associated abundant silica nodules (menilitic opals). The goals of this work are: (i) to characterize the composition, mineralogy and t...

Technological changes have been identified in several European Middle Palaeolithic sites. Specifically, the turnover in discoid and Levallois knapping methods has traditionally been explained by raw material constraints that are usually related to foraging areas and mobility strategies of Neanderthal groups. While Levallois production requires high...

During the 10th International Symposium on Knappable Materials (ISKM) held at Barcelona (Spain) in 2015, a field trip along “The Silica Road” was organized. It included the visit to different chert outcrops located along the Montsant Massif (Tarragona, NE Iberian Peninsula), and to the Middle Palaeolithic site of the Abric Romaní (Capellades, Barce...

Technological changes have been identified in several European Middle Palaeolithic sites. Specifically, the turnover in discoid and Levallois knapping methods has traditionally been explained by raw material constraints that are usually related to foraging areas and mobility strategies of Neanderthal groups. While Levallois production requires high...

The Konservat-Lagerstätte locality Camp dels Ninots (Late Pliocene) in north-eastern Spain was interpreted as a maar lake and its sediments produced, among others, numerous fish fossils. These are represented by articulated (and semi-articulated) specimens and isolated bones and can be classified (within open nomenclature) to two Cyprinidae species...

Técnicas de imagen de sondeo aplicadas a la identificación de intervalos chert y dolomita en sedimentos lacustres Abstract: Geophysical logging tools, particularly ultrasonic acoustic borehole image techniques, are applied on two different wells (CP1 and CP2) to identify and characterize the lacustrine interval (40m) of the Camp dels Ninots maar-di...

Maar volcanoes expose shallower or deeper levels of their internal structure as a function of the degree of erosion. In El Camp dels Ninots maar-diatreme (Catalan Volcanic Zone, Spain), the tephra ring has been largely eroded, and the remaining volcanic deposits infilling the diatreme are hidden under a lacustrine sedimentary infill of the crater....

The late Pliocene locality Camp dels Ninots is a fossil Lagerstätte that yielded an exceptionally well preserved vertebrate fauna. Several turtles were reported from this locality and were all assigned to the living species Mauremys leprosa. We describe here a second turtle taxon based on carapace material. This new taxon is identified as Chelydrop...

We present the results of prospecting in the NE of the Iberian Peninsula, with the aim of identifying the siliceous sources potentially used by the populations that occupied the marginal basins of the Ebro depression during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic.We intend to define the main characteristics of the cherts in the region studied, taking int...

In this paper we present the results of core analysis of Asup level from Molí del Salt site (Vimbodí i Poblet, Tarragona/Spain), dated to ca. 11 ka 14C BP (c. 12700-13000 years cal BP). This analysis was carried out from the methodological proposals raised by various authors as Guilbaud (1995) and Vaquero (1997). With this study, we try to define t...

Because its stratigraphic sequence covers more than 30,000 years of human occupation, the Middle Palaeolithic site of Abric Romaní (Capellades, Spain) provides crucial information to reconstruct Neanderthal behaviours in southern Europe. In this paper we present evidence of the technological behaviours of the Neanderthals groups that settled at lev...

Recent research in Paleolithic archeology has stressed the importance of temporal issues in assemblage interpretation. Archeological assemblages are temporal constructs, formed by the addition of an unknown number of depositional events. This temporal dimension is also evident at the artifactual level, since single artifacts may undergo different e...

We present in this chapter the lithic assemblage of level J. Bearing in mind the temporal issues involved in the interpretation of archeological assemblages, we have organized this chapter according to two different analytical levels. On the one hand, we have studied the technological and functional characteristics of the assemblage-as-a-whole, pay...

The main goal of this chapter is to provide a general presentation of the Abric Romaní site, paying special attention to archeological level J. First, we will present the basic information concerning the geological and geomorphological characteristics of the Capellades region, which are fundamental to understand site formation. We will summarize th...

A new Pliocene Konservat-Lagerstätte in north-eastern Spain is described here for the first time. It is referred to as Camp dels Ninots. The particular geological conditions of the site, which correspond to lacustrine sedimentation in a maar, made it ideal for the preservation of fossils. At present, five large mammal skeletons in anatomical connec...

The human use of fire generates a cultural sedimentary record that can be used to characterize prehistoric activity areas. The aim of this paper is to develop a field guide for recognizing and describing combustion structures. The use of fire as suggested by the results of ethnoarchaeological and prehistoric archaeological studies has served as the...

Address (personal billing address): Puig d'en Sitges, 3, 3-2, 43003 TARRAGONA, SPAIN 5. Abstract The human use of fire generates a cultural sedimentary record that can be used to characterize prehistoric activity areas. The aim of this paper is to develop a field guide for recognizing and describing combustion structures. The use of fire as suggest...

Behavioral strategies are a primary focus in the study of Middle Paleolithic assemblages. Since the emergence of the processual paradigma, this research has been partly based on the use of interpretive frameworks derived from ethnoarcheological sources. However, this approach is flawed by the lack of correspondence between the time scale of the eth...

Characteristics of carnivore accumulations in caves have been defined for a long time in basis of some well studied patterns. Generally human occurrence contexts dominated by carnivores tends to be short-term and low intensity occupations and its characteristics are still discussed. Spatial distribution, activities spectrum, and derived technologic...

El Abric Romaní cuenta con una potente secuencia del Paleolítico Medio de la que hasta el momento se han excavado 13 niveles arqueológicos. Estos niveles muestran un patrón de ocupación basado en la aparición de espacios domésticos en torno a hogares en los que se concentra la mayor parte de las actividades, especialmente las relacionadas con el pr...