Gerd-Christian Weniger

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

The Aurignacian is the first techno-complex related with certainty to Anatomically Modern Humans in Europe. Studies show that they appeared around 43-42 kyr cal BP and dispersed rapidly in Europe during the Upper Palaeolithic. However, human dispersal is a highly convoluted process which is until today not well understood. Here, we provide a recons...

Se presenta un resumen de datos de trabajos de campo en el yacimiento de Malalmuerzo (Moclín, Granada).

In this document we include all the bibliographical references cited in the book. You can consult the references published by the authors in various journals and books on the sites of Cueva de Ardales and Sima de las Palomas de Teba.

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...

Atapuerca, Orce, Cueva Negra y sima de las Palomas del Cabezo Gordo, cuenca de Baza, Maltravieso, sierra Mágina, Zafarraya, Ardales y sima de las Palomas de Teba, La Araña, valle de Lozoya, Doñana... La península ibérica tiene un gran protagonismo en la historia de la evolución humana. Su posición geográfica de puente entre dos continentes (África...

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;...