Javier Fernández-López de Pablo

• PhD
• Researcher at University of Alicante

This Special Issue seeks to assemble a collection of studies focused on different geographical, ecological, and cultural settings from across Eurasia, dealing with the impacts of the ‘8.2 ka BP event’ on human socio-ecological systems. Recognised across a plethora of globally distributed palaeoenvironmental proxies, the ‘8.2 ka BP event’ is a promi...

The spread of trapeze industries (the creation of trapeze-shaped flint tips) during Late Mesolithic is one of the most disruptive phenomena of technological change documented in the European Prehistory. Understanding the chronological patterns of this process requires (i) a critical evaluation of stratigraphic relationship between trapeze assemblag...

Climate variability such as higher or lower temperatures, changing precipitation patterns, shifts in plant communities and other climate-related changes have particularly affected areas with Mediterranean-type climates. A multi-proxy analysis including pollen, sedimentary charcoal, mineralogy and Summed Probability Distributions (SPD) of archaeolog...

Comparative macro-archaeological investigations of the human deep past rely on the availability of unified, quality-checked datasets integrating different layers of observation. Information on the durable and ubiquitous record of Paleolithic stone artefacts and technological choices are especially pertinent to this endeavour. We here present a larg...

Endorheic saline lakes are usually highly sensitive to hydrological processes. Therefore, the sensitivity of this environments means that, with multi-proxy analysis, they are good sedimentary systems to investigate the impacts of past climate changes. This work presents the results of the geochemical analysis of a core from Laguna de Villena, ephem...

Palimpsests are ubiquitous in the open-air archaeological record. Yet, integrated intra-site research strategies of palimpsest dissection to infer occupational histories, spatial behavioural patterns and site formation processes remain scarce in the postglacial archaeology. In this work, we apply an integrated protocol of palimpsest analysis to the...

Unlabelled: Hearth-pits are some of the most common archaeological features documented in open-air Mesolithic sites, especially in coversand areas of NW Europe. However, very few geoarchaeological studies have addressed their formation, function and relationship with occupation surfaces. This work introduces new interdisciplinary investigations on...

Palimpsests are ubiquitous in the open-air archaeological record. Yet, integrated intra-site research strategies of palimpsest dissection to infer occupational histories, spatial behavioral patterns and site formation processes remain scarce in the Postglacial archaeology. In this work, we apply an integrated protocol of palimpsest analysis to the...

Modern humans have populated Europe for more than 45,000 years1,2. Our knowledge of the genetic relatedness and structure of ancient hunter-gatherers is however limited, owing to the scarceness and poor molecular preservation of human remains from that period³. Here we analyse 356 ancient hunter-gatherer genomes, including new genomic data for 116...

Open‐air sites represent a fundamental proxy of the Early Holocene adaptive systems in the Iberian Peninsula. However, its research potential for the study of human–environmental interactions has been minimally explored. In this work, we present the results of an integrated research programme focused on open‐area excavations at the Mesolithic site...

The Early Holocene was a period of climate amelioration, yet paleoclimate records show punctuated episodes of climate change. Premier among these is the '8.2 ka BP event'. While centered on 8.2 ka BP, the duration of this abrupt cooling oscillation was likely much longer, and its onset reaching back to 8.4 ka BP. The synchronicity of the event acro...

The first appearance and subsequent spread of trapeze industries in Western Europe has been recurrently addressed in connection to Neolithization processes and grounded in techno-typological analysis focused on the opposition between two technological systems. However, the precise chronology of its onset as well as the underlaying mechanism of thei...

Archaeologists have been reconstructing interactions amongst hunter-gatherer populations for a long time. These exchangesare materialised in the movements of raw materials and symbolic objects which are found far from their original sources. Social network, i.e. the structure constituted by these interactions, is a well-established concept in archa...

Hearth-pits are some of the most common archaeological features documented in open-air Mesolithic sites, especially in coversand areas of Western and Central Europe. Yet, very few geoarchaeological investigations have addressed their formation, function and relationship with occupation surfaces. This work introduces new interdisciplinary investigat...

Open-air sites represent a fundamental proxy of the Early Holocene adaptive systems in the Iberian Peninsula. However, its research potential for the study of human-environmental interactions has just been minimally explored. In this work, we present the results of an integrated research programme focused on open-area excavations at the Mesolithic...

Hunter–gatherers past and present live in complex societies, and the structure of these can be assessed using social networks. We outline how the integration of new evidence from cultural evolution experiments, computer simulations, ethnography, and archaeology open new research horizons to understand the role of social networks in cultural evoluti...

Mapping methods to represent the interplay between environmental changes and prehistoric communities were investigated through a case study of the Mediterranean Iberia coastal landscape in the context of Holocene sea-level rise. We developed a four-dimension GIS-based analysis of the environmental evolution based on primary data acquisition (fieldw...

Culture is increasingly being framed as a driver of human phenotypes and behaviour. Yet very little is known about variations in the patterns of past social interactions between humans in cultural evolution. The archaeological record, combined with modern evolutionary and analytical approaches, provides a unique opportunity to investigate broad-sca...

Archaeologists have been reconstructing interactions among hunter-gatherer populations for a long time. These exchanges are reflected in the movements of raw materials and symbolic objects which are found far from their original sources. A social network, i.e., the structure constituted by these interactions, is a well-established concept in archae...

We report on a virtual workshop aimed at advancing a new synthesis of techno-cultural patterns at the Pleistocene-Holocene boundary in Europe. We respond to the growing need of developing meta-analytical frameworks for comparing and eventually integrating disparate regional datasets and stress the opportunities of collaborative approaches. We propo...

Successive generations of hunter–gatherers of the Late Glacial and Early Holocene in Iberia had to contend with rapidly changing environments and climatic conditions. This constrained their economic resources and capacity for demographic growth. The Atlantic façade of Iberia was occupied throughout these times and witnessed very significant environ...

About this issue Demography impacts a wide range of aspects of human culture past and present; from our capacity to transmit genes and knowledge across generations, to the reach of our social networks and long-term impacts on the environment. Recent cross-disciplinary advances in the reconstruction and interpretation of prehistoric population histo...

For a long time, archaeologists have observed the interactions among hunter-gatherers’ population embedded in the movement of raw materials and objects found far from their original sources. The social network, the structure constituted by those interactions, is a well-stablished concept in archaeology to estimate connectivity among hunter-gatherer...

Over the past decade, a major debate has taken place on the underpinnings of cultural changes in human societies. A growing array of evidence in behavioural and evolutionary biology has revealed that social connectivity among populations and within them affects, and is affected by, culture. Yet the interplay between prehistoric hunter–gatherer soci...

Social networks are a well-established concept in Palaeolithic Archaeology to interpret different degrees of regional and interregional interactions among hunter-gatherer populations. However, the heuristic power of the networks approach has been traditionally biased towards its social dimension, empirically grounded in the reconstruction of exchan...

Demographic change lies at the core of debates on genetic inheritance and resilience to climate change of prehistoric hunter-gatherers. Here we analyze the radiocarbon record of Iberia to reconstruct long-term changes in population levels and test different models of demographic growth during the Last Glacial-Interglacial transition. Our best fitti...

During the Early Holocene, the Mediterranean region of Iberia witnessed a major technological rupture. Between the micro-bladelet industries of Magdalenian filiation (Late Up- per Magdalenian and Microlaminar Epipalaeolithic) and the Late Mesolithic industries of trapezoid microliths (also called Geometric Mesolithic), the archaeological record sho...

Publication will be available free until the 24th April: https://authors.elsevier.com/a/1Wfw2-4PRmJrJ This article focuses on a former salt lake in the upper Vinalopó Valley in south-eastern Spain. The study spans the Late Pleistocene through to the Late Holocene, although with particular focus on the period between 11 ka cal BP and 3000 ka cal BP...

The Middle to Upper Palaeolithic transition was a process of cultural and biological replacement, considered a turning point in human evolutionary history. Various hypotheses have been used to explain the disappearance of Neanderthals from Eurasia. However, very few studies have explicitly examined the causative role of demography on Neanderthal an...

Over the past years, the study of Early to Mid-Holocene coastal adaptations has emerged as a key research topic to understand processes of economic intensification and human resilience to environmental change. As the sea level rose during the Lateglacial Interstadial coastal configuration dramatically changed, inducing sedimentary infilling of estu...

SESSION ABSTRACT: Constructing units and placing these units into taxonomies is a necessary part of archaeological practice. Without taxonomies we can nether construct nor interpret culture history, not can we hope to build bridges across regions and time periods. However, many of the units we use – facies, cultures, technocomplexes and the like –...

The study of demography has been of long interest to prehistorians, who have been concerned with whether there were any demographic transitions associated with climatic events, the introduction of new technologies and subsistence strategies or, more generally, with cultural change. However, no element of the archaeological record is directly associ...

Land snails recovered from archeological deposits may be used to deduce climatic conditions during prehistoric occupation because their aragonitic skeletons are usually well-preserved and document valuable climatic information in the form of isotope codes. Since the snail Sphincterochila candidissima is common in archeological sites along the weste...

The Iberian Peninsula is characterized by a rapid spread of Early Neolithic sites, a spatial discontinuity of the implantations, in the meanwhile of persistence of Late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers. So far, the most convincing model to explain those evidences is the “maritime pioneer colonization” implying that earliest Neolithic settlements were im...

The 1980s excavations at the El Collado, a large open-air Mesolithic site on the Eastern coast of Spain, revealed a sequence of human occupations consisting of a large shell midden and 14 human burials dated to the Mesolithic period. Human palaeodietary reconstructions based on bone collagen δ13C and δ15N isotope ratios, identified a variable contr...

El Collado is an open air site containing evidence of 14 burials and a shell midden archaeological deposit with different phases of human occupation dated to the Early Holocene. Previous studies have produced 14 radiocarbon dates using bone collagen samples from human burials. However, no attempt has been made to date the stratigraphic sequence to...

Twelve pollen-inferred aridity major and minor events (S1 to S12) have been identified at Salines playa lake (SE Iberian Peninsula, 475 m asl, 38� 300 0200 N00� 530 1800 W) from the Lateglacial to the Early Holocene (Boreal). These dry events consist of an increase in the aridity quotient calculated as a function of selected pollen taxa at 13.4, 13,...

The Upper Vinalopó Valley is well known from the late 1960s by its archaeological record of Epipaleolithic and Mesolithic surface sites. The main surface collection, Casa de Lara, had provided lithic assemblages typologically assigned to the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods. However, radiocarbon dates and chrono-stratigraphic information...

Local perceptions of environmental and climate change, as well as associated adaptations made by local populations, are fundamental for designing comprehensive and inclusive mitigation and adaptation plans both locally and nationally. In this paper, we analyze people's perceptions of environmental and climate-related transformations in communities...

Located on the Iberian Mediterranean coast, El Collado is an open-air site where a rescue excavation was conducted over two seasons in 1987 and 1988. The archaeological work excavated a surface area of 143m2 where 14 burials were discovered, providing skeletal re-mains from 15 individuals. We have obtained AMS dates for 10 of the 15 individuals by...

We present a state of the art about the current knowledge on Mesolithic open-air sites in the central Mediterranean region of Spain. Three main archaeological sites have been extensively excavated – Casa Corona, Benàmer and El Collado – providing evidence of features and lithic and zooarchaeological assemblages dated to the Early and Late Mesolithi...

Despite the ubiquity of terrestrial gastropods in the Late Pleistocene and Holocene archaeological record, it is still unknown when and how this type of invertebrate resource was incorporated into human diets. In this paper, we report the oldest evidence of land snail exploitation as a food resource in Europe dated to 31.3-26.9 ka yr cal BP from th...

The land snail Sphincterochila candidissima from archeological records in Villena (SE Spain) was studied isotopically to estimate the Younger Dryas (YD)–early Holocene transition in the western Mediterranean. Live-collected individuals exhibited body (−21.8 ± 1.6‰) and shell (−5.8 ± 1.4‰) δ13C values typical of a C3 plant diet, probably combined wi...

Surface assemblages represent the most accessible, representative sample of the archaeological record for the study of human socio-ecological systems at regional scales. However, the difficulty in developing suitable chronological frameworks from surface assemblages has limited their use. Additionally, surface scatters are composed of artifacts tha...

Arenal de la Virgen and Casa Corona, located in the upper Vinalopó Valley (SE of the Iberian Peninsula), are open-air Mesolithic sites dated to the Middle Holocene – 8600-7800 cal BP. Recent excavations have provided evidence of non-marine assemblages dominated by terrestrial (Sphincterochila candidissima and Iberus alonensis) and fresh water gastr...

Fieldwork carried out in the prehistoric site of Arenal de la Virgen (Villena, Alicante) have provided thorough evidences for the first lacustrine occupation belonging to Notches and Denticulates Mesolithic in the Iberian Peninsula. In this paper we present chronostratigraphical and palaeoenvironmental data along with material culture, subsistence...

a b s t r a c t Arenal de la Virgen and Casa Corona, located in the upper Vinalopó Valley (SE of the Iberian Peninsula), are open-air Mesolithic sites dated to the Middle Holocene e 8600-7800 cal BP. Recent excavations have provided evidence of non-marine assemblages dominated by terrestrial (Sphincterochila candidissima and Iberus alonensis) and f...

Recent marine and lake core studies in the Western Mediterranean Basin and Iberia have changed the traditional perception of Holocene climate change. Particularly important in this region, the 8,200 cal BP event is marked by colder and more arid conditions. During this episode, we identify a pattern of abandonment episodes at five Late Mesolithic s...

This paper explores how Early Holocene climate changes in the Western Mediterranean would have affected Late Mesolithic settlement distribution and subsistence strategies in Iberian Peninsula, thereby giving rise to various adaptive scenarios. The current radiocarbon data set concerning the Neolithisation process has revealed the rapidity of the sp...

We present a state of research regarding to the previous approaches, archaeological sites and the archaeological and paleo-biological information about the last hunter- gatherers on the Valencian region in the Mediterranean façade of Iberia. The main stratigraphic reference is still Cocina cave, excavated by L. Pericot (1941-1945), which was also t...

INTRODUCCIÓN En este artículo presentamos los resultados preliminares del trabajo de revisión del yacimiento arqueológico del Arenal de la Virgen (Villena, Alicante). Éste ha contado con una ayuda a la investigación concedida por la Fundación Municipal José María Soler del Ayuntamiento de Villena otorgada tras la reso-lución de la convocatoria públ...

RESUMEN: En el presente trabajo se aborda el estudio de las flechas en el Arte Levantino a partir de su contrastación con los proyectiles en piedra tallada recuperados en los yacimientos meso- líticos y neolíticos más próximos a los abrigos pintados del núcleo de la Valltorta-Gasulla. El aná- lisis de las diferentes modalidades de representación y...

Se presenta el estudio de un total de cinco yacimientos localizados en el tramo superior del Riu de les Coces (Alt Maestral, Castellón). Partiendo de los problemas derivados de la naturaleza de la información manejada se aborda su contextualización en el marco de la secuencia arqueológica y del hábitat del Holoceno inicial en el Maestrazgo y en el...

We present an advance of the excavation results of a new Neolithic site located in Valltorta-Gasulla Rock Art nucleus. Their sequence presents diverse archaeological levels between the Recent Mesolithic and Final Neolithic periods. We make a first approach to the characteristics of the occupations from the taphonomy, and the site is integrated in t...

We present a new outdoor site ie Bronze Age located in the \ alltorta-Gasulla Cultural Park. His interest is in being formed by negative structures and placed in an area where an earlier prehistoric occupation imporlante Final Neolithic-Eneolithic) is documented.

El objetivo del presente trabajo es dar a conocer un nuevo conjunto de grabados al aire libre localizados en el término municipal de Serra d'en Galzerán (Castellón)' La documentación y estudio se enmarca dentro del proyecto de investigación desarrollado por el lnstituto de Arte Rupestre y la Universidad de Alicante con la finalidad de establecer un...

La industria lítica proveniente de los registros de superficie localizados en el Barranco de Olula (Almansa), permite plantear en esta zona la existencia de ocupaciones al aire libre anteriores a la Edad de Bronce. Se presenta la documentación valorando de forma crítica los problemas del registro del que proceden. Por último, se contextualiza esta...

LA MWNTANYA DEL CAVALL (ALBALAT DELS TrlRONGERS, VALENCIA), UN YACIMIENTO MESOLÍTICO EN LA SERRA CALDERONA Durante los trabajos de campo desarrollados por uno de las firmantes (RMV) a lo largo del año 1997 para el inventario de los conjuntos de arte mpestre de la Comunidad Válenciana (l), realizamos una visita en compañia de Pilar Iborra a la Cova...