Gerd-Christian Weniger

University of Cologne | UOC · Institute of Prehistory and Early History

Molluscs used as personal adornment in Gravettian context are scarce in the Iberian Peninsula.Less than 200 pieces have been barely found along the Mediterranean, and most of them incoastal sites. This article presents thirteen new items–in the majority of marine origin–found by a Spanish-German team during a joint research project in Cueva de Arda...

The Iberian Peninsula is of particular interest for the research on the Neanderthal (NEA) to anatomically modern human (AMH) population transition. The AMHs arrived in Iberia last from Eastern Europe and thus any possible contacts between the two populations occurred here later than elsewhere. The transition process took place in the earlier part o...

Human populations underwent range contractions during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) which had lasting and dramatic effects on their genetic variation. The genetic ancestry of individuals associated with the post-LGM Magdalenian technocomplex has been interpreted as being derived from groups associated with the pre-LGM Aurignacian. However, both th...

The Iberomaurusian lithic assemblages from Ifri El Baroud (northeast Morocco) are discussed from techno-economic, typological, and functional points of view. The site preserves an archaeological sequence spanning the period ca. 23,000–13,000 cal BP. The analysis of the lithic materials from the sequence highlights the diachronic changes in human be...

The Cueva de Ardales is a hugely important Palaeolithic site in the south of the Iberian Peninsula owing to its rich inventory of rock art. From 2011–2018, excavations were carried out in the cave for the first time ever by a Spanish-German research team. The excavation focused on the entrance area of the cave, where the largest assemblage of non-f...

In this chapter we summarize the main results of our human dispersal modelling activities by the Our Way Model developed within the CRC 806. When a pdf file becomes available from the publisher it can be shared as a text for private use. Meanwhile, it's possible to have a peek into sample pages of the book that encompasses results from the CRC806 a...

Significance The emergence of symbolic behavior in our genus is a controversial issue. The dating of paintings in three caves from the Iberian Peninsula supports the view that Neanderthals developed a form of cave art more than 20,000 years before the emergence of anatomical modernity in Europe. In this study, we confirm that the paintings on a lar...

As the south-westernmost region of Europe, the Iberian Peninsula stands as a key area for understanding the process of modern human dispersal into Eurasia. However, the precise timing, ecological setting and cultural context of this process remains controversial concerning its spatiotemporal distribution within the different regions of the peninsul...

The Aurignacian occurred in the middle of the Last Glacial Period, in which climate underwent major changes on millennial time scales, highlighted by the Greenland interstadial and stadial periods. Here we investigate how climate change influenced the Aurignacian human dispersal in Europe and search for answers to several highly-debated questions i...

Cueva de Ardales in Málaga, Spain, is one of the richest and bestpreserved Paleolithic painted caves of southwestern Europe, containing over a thousand graphic representations. Here, we study the red pigment in panel II.A.3 of “Sala de las Estrellas,” dated by U-Th to the Middle Paleolithic, to determine its composition, verify its anthropogenic na...

Archaeological records indicate that many regions in Europe were unoccupied by hunter-gatherers during the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), probably due to the harsh climatic conditions and glacial extent. In the populated regions of southwestern Europe, a new technocomplex, the Solutrean, is known to have emerged among hunter-gatherers but did not reac...

The SW coast of the Iberian Peninsula experiences a lack of palaeoenvironmental and archaeological data. With the aim to fill this gap, we contribute with a new palynological and geochemical dataset obtained from a sediment core drilled in the continental shelf of the Algarve coast. Archaeological data have been correlated with our multi-proxy data...

The site of Ifri El Baroud has one of the longest sequences excavated in recent times in NE Morocco, covering a chronology of ca. 23-13 ka cal BP. The sequence includes Early and Late Iberomaurusian levels and offers the possibility of investigating the economic, social and environmental processes that took place during this period. In this paper w...

Archaeological research has been carried out in the Eastern Rif (Morocco) since 1995 by a collaborative Moroccan-German research team. A major topic of the project is the transition from hunting-gathering to food production and related cultural developments. Innovations such as pottery and domesticated species appeared around 7.6 ka calBP. The cult...

The database contains 361 sites with a chronology from 57,000-12,000 yrs cal BP. They represent at least 588 occupation events.

Un equipo interdisciplinar internacional viene realizando nuevas investigaciones en Cueva de Ardales (Ardales, Málaga) y en Sima de las Palomas (Teba, Málaga), enmarcadas en un Proyecto General de Investigación autorizado por la Junta de Andalucía. Presentamos un avance de los datos obtenidos en ambas cavidades en relación a la ocupación vinculada...

Cleaning works in the cave of Las Palomas in Teba (Málaga, Spain), developed by the Guadalteba Consortium, have provided a number of lithic tools and knapping products that may be ascribed to the Mode III technotypological tradition as well as remains of a number of large mammal species typical of MiddleeLate Pleistocene times. Topographic measurem...

The Malalmuerzo cave (Moclín, Granada, Spain) has been known since the 1980s for its archaeological remains and rock art, dated to the Neolithic and the Solutrean periods respectively. However, following thirty years of neglect, our team carried out a brief archaeological intervention after looters destroyed parts of the sediment fill of the cave....

The Iberomaurusian lithic assemblages from Ifri El Baroud (northeast Morocco) are discussed from techno-economic, typological, and functional points of view. The site preserves an archaeological sequence spanning the period ca. 23,000–13,000 cal BP. The analysis of the lithic materials from the sequence highlights the diachronic changes in human be...

In this report, we present the contributions, outcomes, ideas, discussions and conclusions obtained at the PaleoMaps Workshop 2019, that took place at the Institute of Geography of the University of Cologne on 23 and 24 September 2019. The twofold aim of the workshop was: (1) to provide an overview of approaches and methods that are presently used...

Heinrich events are recognized as the dominant periods of extreme cold terrestrial climate conditions during the last glacial period. The role of climate forcing alone upon Human Existence Potential (HEP) during extreme events, e.g. Heinrich and Dansgaard-Oeschger events, is not yet sufficiently resolved. By reproducing climate variables during the...

Located at the center of the Cantabrian coast in a sedimentary terrace currently at the sea shore, the site of Bañugues (Gozón, Asturias) is one of the key places for studying the first settlements of the Iberian North. In the present work, we show the results of the geoarchaeological study undertaken on the bay of Bañugues and on the stratigraphic...

Previous studies have shown that climate events have the potential to significantly impact hunter-gatherer land use patterns in the Western Mediterranean. Especially Heinrich Event 1 (18-15.6 ka calBP) affected the long-term stability of Magdalenian groups on the South of the Iberian Peninsula, while it did not impact the contemporaneous Iberomauru...

The work undertaken at the Jarama VI site (Valdesotos, Guadalajara, Spain) in the 1990s resulted in the recovery of thousands of archeological remains from the three Pleistocene sedimentary units of this cavity. Prior to the systematic analysis of the lithic material and the reception of new geochronological data, it had been suggested that the upp...

This paper investigates the correlation between climate, environment and human land use in the Westernmost Mediterranean on both sides of the Strait of Gibraltar during the Late Glacial. Using a multi-proxy approach on a sample of 300 sites from the Solutrean and Magdalenian of the Iberian Peninsula and from the Iberomaurusian in Morocco, we find e...

During the Solutrean, regional differences in topography, as well as climate constraints, influenced not only the dispersal of animal species, but also human behaviour on the Iberian Peninsula. In this paper, past environments within catchment areas are reconstructed using Site Catchment Analysis and Species Distribution Modelling. By comparing mod...

Classic models on population dynamics in inland Iberia during Marine Isotope Stage 2 have depicted this area, dominated by the Spanish plateau, as nearly unpopulated until Magdalenian times. In recent years, some researchers have questioned these models, mainly based on new field data. Preliminary evidence coming from the Peña Capón rock shelter ha...

Preface The aim of the workshop on “Pleistocene Databases” held at the Neanderthal Museum/ Mettmann in 2010 was to provide an update on databases dealing with scientific data concerning Pleistocene humans. Scientific databases and data exchange are topics of particular interest in the fields of palaeoanthropology and archaeology. The amount of data...

This article focuses on the upper Palaeolithic human occupation of Northern Morocco in the period between Heinrich event (HE) 2 and HE 1 (ca. 26–16 ka cal BP), which includes the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM). The severe cooling during this time span had an important impact on the palaeoenvironment in the whole northern hemisphere, representing a majo...

The book assembles new insights into humanity’s social, cultural and economic developments during the Last Glacial Maximum in Western Europe and adjacent regions. It gathers original, up-to-date research results on the Solutrean techno-complex, reflecting four major fields of research: data from current excavations; analysis of lithic assemblages;...

An international team began initial excavations in Ardales Cave (Ardales, Málaga) and in Sima de las Palomas (Teba, Málaga) within the framework of a General Research Project authorized by the Junta of Andalusia. Ardales Cave is a site well known for the importance of its Palaeolithic rock art. In this new project, excavations were carried out in z...

With the onset of the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), hunter-gatherers of the so-called Iberomaurusian techno-complex appeared in what is now the Mediterranean Maghreb. During a period of about seven thousand years, these groups left sandy occupation layers in a limited number of archaeological sites, while at the beginning of Greenland Interstadial (G...

Anhand einer Stichprobe publizierter Skelettbefunde wildbeuterischer Gruppen wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob chronologische oder geschlechtsspezifische Unterschiede hinsichtlich der Verletzungshäufigkeit und insbesondere der Gewalteinwirkung an den Skelettpopulationen erkannt werden können. Die Auswertung der Daten legt nahe, dass männliche Individ...

Entdeckungen paläolithischer und mesolithischer Oberflächenfunde führen aus denkmalpflegerischer Perspektive zwangsläufig zu Überlegungen, wie der Schutz eines solchen archäologischen Fundplatzes am besten gewährleistet werden kann. Zwar ist deren Bedeutung in der Bodendenkmalpflege und der einschlägigen Forschung hinlänglich bekannt, eine Argument...

Slimak et al. challenge the reliability of our oldest (>65,000 years) U-Th dates on carbonates associated with cave paintings in Spain. They cite a supposed lack of parietal art for the 25,000 years following this date, along with potential methodological issues relating to open-system behavior and corrections to detrital or source water 230Th.We s...

From 12th to 14th of October 2017, around 70 researchers from several countries met in Faro to discuss current and future research on the Solutrean, a cultural phase of the Last Glacial Maximum in Europe. To this end, 50 presentations and posters provided insights into ongoing research in Western Europe and beyond.The excursion headed to the import...

The spatial distribution and dating of archaeological sites suggest a poor occupation of southern Iberia by hunter-gatherers after the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) and during Heinrich event 1 (H1) compared to Northern Iberia. The H1 was a period of cold and arid climate conditions and is suspected to have played an important role in the population dy...

The existence of an early Upper Palaeolithic culture at the transition from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Upper Palaeolithic in North African cave sites is currently under debate. We studied Ifri n‘Ammar in North-East Morocco, which is one of the oldest settlement sites of anatomically modern humans (AMH) in the Maghreb and contains several sedime...

This paper focuses on analyzing the links between archaeological sites and their environments by calculating the catchment areas of Solutrean sites in Iberia and the habitat suitability for the different hunted species in each site. This research uses Geographic Information Systems (GIS) for calculating the catchment areas and Species Distribution...

The timing of the late Middle Paleolithic and late disappearance of Neanderthals in the Iberian Peninsula are hotly debated subjects in Paleolithic archeology. Several studies suggested a late survival in South and Central Iberia until about 32 ka, but were probably subject to significant age underestimation due to contamination of dating samples,...

The archaeological sequence of the Palaeolithic site of La Güelga apparently shows an interstratification of Aurignacian between the Mousterian and Châtelperronian layers, a sequence which disagrees with the stratigraphic model for the Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition in SW-Europe. We analyzed the witness section of the interior sector in ar...

Neandertal cave art It has been suggested that Neandertals, as well as modern humans, may have painted caves. Hoffmann et al. used uranium-thorium dating of carbonate crusts to show that cave paintings from three different sites in Spain must be older than 64,000 years. These paintings are the oldest dated cave paintings in the world. Importantly,...

Possible contacts between hunter-gatherers of Northern Africa and Europe via the Strait of Gibraltar during the Pleistocene are still object to discussions. In the absence of significant fossil remains, debates are mainly based on similarities and differences of singular aspects of material culture. However, a theoretical framework for these discus...

This paper analyses the territoriality and mobility of hunter-gatherer groups that inhabited Coímbre in its different occupation periods (Magdalenian and Gravettian). With the objective of developing this study a Geographic Information System was used, allowing us to get new information of Coímbre cave in relation to the lithic raw materials uneart...

Ifri El Baroud (34°45´N, 3°18´W), located at 535 m. a. s. l. on the northern slope of the Ich Chaboun massif in Northeast Morocco, constitutes one of the few sites in the whole Maghreb –together with Ifri n’Ammar – that yield a complete Later Stone Age sequence (late Upper Palaeolithic), including the transition from Late Pleistocene to Holocene, r...

Introduction and objectives: Although the Iberian Peninsula is a key area for understanding the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition and the demise of the Neandertals, valuable evidence for these debates remains scarce and problematic in its interior regions. Sparse data supporting a late Neandertal persistence in the Iberian interior have been...

Supporting tables on micromorphology and archeozoology and taphonomy. (PDF)

Our study focuses on the ephemeral stream deposits of Wadi Selloum to identify phases of morphodynamic stability (pedogenesis) and activity (flooding) in the direct vicinity of the rock shelter of Ifri n'Ammar (NE Morocco). As one of the oldest settlement sites of anatomically modern humans (AMH) in North Africa, Ifri n'Ammar documents periodical o...

The timing of Neanderthal disappearance in the Iberian Peninsula is a hotly debated subject in Palaeolithic archaeology. Several studies suggested a late survival in South and Central Iberia until about 32,000 year ago (ka), but were probably subject to significant age underestimation due to contamination of dating samples and/or lack of stratigrap...

Archaeological sequences require accurate and precise numerical chronologies. Mostly, these sediments are strati-graphically complex and challenging to date. Post-depositional mixing, contamination from a collapsing cave roof, microdosimetry or insufficient bleaching prior to burial may influence the luminescence dating results. Careful sample sele...

The overall objective of this work is to apply GIS-based cost distance modeling (CDM) to site catchment modeling and analysis of prehistoric (Solutrean) sites in Andalusia. The implementation of a GIS-method for slope-based CDM was explained in detail, so that it can be replicated easily in future studies. Additional cost components, vegetation and...