João Zilhão

• PhD
• Research Professor at University of Lisbon

The 1998 discovery of a nearly intact Gravettian human burial in the Lapedo Valley (Leiria, Portugal) propelled the Lagar Velho rockshelter to worldwide fame. The ochre-stained skeleton of the Lapedo child, a juvenile aged around four or five, exhibited a mosaic of Neanderthal and anatomically modern human features argued to reflect admixture betwe...

For a long time, the study of the Iberian Acheulean was constrained by the sites’ lack of reliable dating. However, during the last decade, the number of age measurements available for Acheulean sites has grown considerably. We now know that the technocomplex minimally spans the MIS 12 to MIS 6 interval. The Entrada do Vale da Serra is one such dat...

The Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal), with evidence of human occupancy dating back ∼ 400,000 years, is one of very few Middle Pleistocene cave sites to provide a fossil hominin cranium in association with Acheulean bifaces and the by-products of fire usage. Zooarchaeological, taphonomic and tooth-wear analyses suggest that the accumulation...

Today, Germanic languages, including German, English, Frisian, Dutch and the Nordic languages, are widely spoken in northwest Europe. However, key aspects of the assumed arrival and diversification of this linguistic group remain contentious 1—3 . By adding 712 new ancient human genomes we find an archaeologically elusive population entering Sweden...

The article addresses the challenges posed by the interdisciplinary collaboration that led to the recent Nature article presenting results of the extraction of ancient human DNA from a perforated deer tooth found in Denisova Cave. We provide a critical analysis of the contextual data that directly impacts the interpretation of the genetic data and...

Western Eurasia witnessed several large-scale human migrations during the Holocene1–5. Here, to investigate the cross-continental effects of these migrations, we shotgun-sequenced 317 genomes—mainly from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods—from across northern and western Eurasia. These were imputed alongside published data to obtain diploid genot...

https://www.ffms.pt/pt-pt/livraria/portugal-na-idade-do-gelo-territorio-e-habitantes

Gruta da Oliveira features a c. 13 m-thick infilling that includes a c. 6.5 m-thick archaeological deposit (the “Middle Palaeolithic sequence” complex), which Bayesian modelling of available dating results places in MIS 5a (layers 7–14) and MIS 5b (layers 15–25), c. 71,000–93,000 years ago. The accumulation primarily consists of sediment washed in...

Gruta da Oliveira is a cave in the Almonda karst system (Torres Novas, Portugal), which lies at the southern edge of the Central Limestone Massif of Portuguese Estremadura. Archaeologically excavated between 1991 and 2012, the site is dated to between ca. 70 and ca. 100 ky ago and yielded tens of thousands of microvertebrate and macrovertebrate rem...

A 2006-2018 research project targeted three sites in the Mula basin –Cueva Antón, and two Rambla Perea rock-shelters, La Boja and Finca Doña Martina– and their geological and geomorphological context. With only a few gaps, their stratigraphic successions span the 10,000-90,000 years ago interval and revealed high-resolution, hearth-focused living f...

Cet article aborde les défis posés par la collaboration interdisciplinaire qui a conduit au récent article de Nature présentant les résultats de l'extraction d'ADN humain ancien à partir d'une canine de cervidé perforée trouvée dans la grotte de Denisova. Nous proposons ici une analyse critique des données contextuelles qui a un impact direct sur l...

The procurement of small prey by Palaeolithic hunter-gatherers has been much discussed over the past decades, particularly with regards to birds. Birds provide information about the different ecological niches available to exploitation and contribute to the clarification of basic aspects of human behaviour and subsistence. Here, we report on the Mi...

Understanding mobility and landscape use is important in reconstructing subsistence behavior, range, and group size, and it may contribute to our understanding of phenomena such as the dynamics of biological and cultural interactions between distinct populations of Upper Pleistocene humans. However, studies using traditional strontium isotope analy...

Despite its strategic importance at the furthermost edge of the Neolithic expansion in Europe, archaeogenetic data from Mesolithic and Neolithic human remains from Portugal are still very limited. Here we present ancient mtDNA evidence (mostly unpublished) to fill the gap and discuss the pattern of "genetic resurgence" of hunter-gatherer (Mesolithi...

Hominin consumption of small prey has been much discussed over the past decades. Such resources are often considered to be unproductive in the Middle Paleolithic due to their limited meat yield and, hence, low energy return. However, ethnographic studies suggest that small prey—including shellfish—are a reliable, predictable and by no means margina...

Whether ethnoarcheological models of hunter-gatherer mobility, landscape use, and structuration of the inhabited space are relevant to the archeology of Neandertals and the Middle Paleolithic remains controversial. The thin lenses of hearth-associated stone tools and faunal remains excavated in sub-complex AS5 of Cueva Antón (Murcia, Spain) signifi...

The frontal sinuses are cavities inside the frontal bone located at the junction between the face and the cranial vault and close to the brain. Despite a long history of study, understanding of their origin and variation through evolution is limited. This work compares most hominin species’ holotypes and other key individuals with extant hominids....

Marine Isotope Stage 5 (MIS 5) is well represented in palynological studies of North Atlantic marine cores but in only a handful of archeological sequences from the adjacent Iberian landmass. In this paper, we undertake a multi-proxy analysis of small mammal assemblages (insectivores, bats, and rodents) from a 6 m-thick succession, dated to MIS 5a-...

Junto con las cuevas de Maltravieso (Cáceres) y La Pasiega (Cantabria), la cueva de Ardales (Málaga) alberga pinturas de al menos 65.500 años de antigüedad, siendo estas las más antiguas encontradas hasta el momento. Recientemente, se ha publicado un estudio cuyo objetivo era determinar la naturaleza y origen del pigmento rojo que conforma uno de l...

La excavación de la necrópolis prehistórica de Galeria da Cisterna (1988-1989) recuperó los restos de varios individuos. La datación de cuatro de ellos demuestra que la cavidad fue usada con fines funerarios en época campaniforme. No se ha encontrado ningún fragmento de la característica cerámica del periodo, pero un pequeño fragmento de espiral en...

Western Eurasia witnessed several large-scale human migrations during the Holocene. To investigate the cross-continental impacts we shotgun-sequenced 317 primarily Mesolithic and Neolithic genomes from across Northern and Western Eurasia. These were imputed alongside published data to obtain diploid genotypes from >1,600 ancient humans. Our analyse...

Paint technology, namely paint preparation and application procedures, is an important aspect of painting traditions. With the expansion of archaeometric studies and in situ non-destructive analytical methods, a renewal of technological studies is being observed in rock art. In situ analyses have several limitations that are widely discussed in the...

This paper presents the votive artefacts from the surficial burial context identified at Sala do Ricardo, Lapa da Bugalheira, mostly composed of polished stone tools, a «Montbolo» vessel, knapped stone tools, and Glycymeris sp. bracelets. Coupled with the radiocarbon ages obtained on the associated human bone remains, this composition is consistent...

During the last twenty years, the debate about the transition of the Middle to the Upper Palaeolithic in the Iberian Peninsula has been centered around four main questions: the entity and chronology of the Châtelperronian of the Cantabrian region and Catalonia; the existence of a Late Mousterian to the south and west of the Ebro depression; the exi...

Gruta do Caldeirão features a c. 6 m-thick archaeological stratification capped by Holocene layers ABC-D and Ea, which overlie layer Eb, a deposit of Magdalenian age that underwent significant disturbance, intrusion, and component mixing caused by funerary use of the cave during the Early Neolithic. Here, we provide an updated overview of the strat...

In the Franco-Cantabrian region and Catalonia, the Upper Palaeolithic begins with three assemblage-types found in stratigraphic order through the interval between 45,000 and 37,000 years ago: the Châtelperronian, the Protoaurignacian, and the Early Aurignacian. A stone tool, the Châtelperron point, and a bone tool, the split-based point, are index...

A fossil remain of porcupine, a large-sized rodent hitherto unknown in Portugal, was identified during the 2010-13 excavation of the Last Interglacial deposit of Figueira Brava cave. The specimen is a left hemimandible retaining the PM/4 to M/2 series but lacking the incisor and the M/3. Based on the analysis of its morphological and odontometric f...

Nouveaux âges pour de vieilles peintures. La datation U-Th révèle l’origine néandertalienne des peintures pariétales Nous présentons une vue d’ensemble et les résultats récents des datations U-Th des encroûtements carbonatés associés aux grottes ornées. Cette méthode fournit des contraintes d’âge minimum pour les peintures où l’encroûtement daté re...

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...

Funerary usage of Galeria da Cisterna (Almonda) and Gruta do Caldeirão began at the onset of the Neolithic and continued until Early Medieval times. At Cisterna, the thin Holocene deposit was unstratified; at Caldeirão, the stratigraphic sequence underwent post-depositional disturbance. Using radiocarbon dating, typological considerations, spatial...

Sourced from the Tyrrhenian Islands and exchanged over long distances, obsidian was used widely across prehistoric Western Europe. An obsidian core and bladelets from a newly discovered rockshelter site in south-eastern Spain, however, raised the possibility of an unrecognised mainland source of obsidian. EDXRF analysis of the Early Magdalenian fin...

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...

The European climate during the Holocene period is characterised by frequent changes of temperature and precipitation. The North Atlantic plays a major role as a driver for European climate and is a dominant precipitation source, particularly for the western European and north African realm. Atmospheric pressure gradients over the Atlantic (North A...

Use of radiocarbon to date the human past depends on the accuracy of age measurements and the association of the sample with the events or processes one intends to date. With AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry), samples that are themselves directly informative can be used, which adds correct specimen classification, typological or taxonomic, to the...

Based on previous radiocarbon and U-series (Diffusion/Adsorption) dating of bone samples, the Middle Palaeolithic has been thought to persist at Gruta da Oliveira until ∼37 thousand years (ka) ago. New U-series ages for stratigraphically constraining speleothems, coupled with new luminescence ages for sediment infill, show that the site’s ∼6 m-thic...

Here we analyze the fossil remains of Castor fiber from the Middle Pleistocene site of Gruta da Aroeira, in the Almonda karst system, Tagus basin (Torres Novas, Portugal) and discuss the archaeological implications of the presence of beavers in the region. The Almonda karst system has been the backdrop for human evolution in Portugal, because there...

Gilman (1984) proposed that an "Upper Paleolithic Revolution" triggered by technological progress and demographic growth, and standing for the emergence of ritual reciprocity mechanisms, explained the major behavioral innovations se en in Europe after 40,000 years ago. Subsequent developments have shown that the notion remains valid but that early...

We present the results of the first year of the field work carried out at Lapa da Bugalheira (Almonda, Torres Novas) by the ARQEVO research project. We have identified an Early Neolithic occupation featuring a characteristic artefact assemblage with impressed wares (both cardial and “boquique”), geometric microliths and ornaments. The age of the as...

p>The presence of rock and portable art on Sicily has been recognized since World War II. This record has been unanimously attributed to the Upper Palaeolithic in the published literature, based almost uniquely on stylistic reasoning. Here we present the first absolute dates in direct association with the Sicilian art record. These data provide new...

The site of Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal), with evidence of human occupancy dating to ca. 400 ka (Marine Isotope Stage 11), is one of the very few Middle Pleistocene localities to have provided a fossil hominin cranium associated with Acheulean bifaces in a cave context. The multianalytic study reported here of the by-products of burnin...

Gruta do Caldeirão is an archaeological cave site located in Tomar (Portugal, western Iberian Peninsula), which contains an important Late Pleistocene sequence from Middle Paleolithic (Mousterian) to Upper Paleolithic (Solutrean-Magdalenian), including lithic tools, human remains, and other large- and small-vertebrate remains. Our revision and inte...

The Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva, Valencia) stratigraphic succession comprises nine Middle Palaeolithic levels. Human selection of this rock shelter for occupation owes to its favourable location—at the gates of a blind valley where the trapping of large herbivores would have been practicable. The immediate environment is varied, with both abrupt...

The introduction of farming had far-reaching impacts on health, social structure and demography. Although the spread of domesticated plants and animals has been extensively tracked, it is unclear how these nascent economies developed within different environmental and cultural settings. Using molecular and isotopic analysis of lipids from pottery,...

Fruits of the sea The origins of marine resource consumption by humans have been much debated. Zilhão et al. present evidence that, in Atlantic Iberia's coastal settings, Middle Paleolithic Neanderthals exploited marine resources at a scale on par with the modern human–associated Middle Stone Age of southern Africa (see the Perspective by Will). Ex...

Dated to ca. 400 ka (Marine Isotope Stage 11), the site of Gruta da Aroeira (Torres Novas, Portugal) is one of the very few Middle Pleistocene localities that have yielded a fossil hominin cranium associated with Acheulean bifaces, in a cave context. Our multi-analytical approach to the site’s archaeological record focused on different aspects: the...

Our paper focuses on plant use in the Lower Solutrean to Solutreogravettian sequence of La Boja, a rock-shelter in the Rambla Perea gorge, near Mula (Murcia, Spain). We report on 5692 fragments of charcoal collected (a) within, or in immediate proximity, of 19 fireplaces, or (b) scattered away from hearth features in the same occupation horizons. F...

The site of Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva, Valencia) is a shelter with several levels with Middle Palaeolithic occupations. The level IV, with two dates of 43,930 ± 750 BP (Beta-244002) and >51.6 ka BP (OxA-24855), has a palimpsest structure and a high density of archaeological remains (lithic industry, fauna, charcoals and combustion structures)....

Se expone un análisis arqueométrico de los ocres de Cueva de Ardales, para valorar materias primas, procedencia y aplicaciones en los motivos gráficos paleolíticos de la cavidad.

Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva, Valencia) is a site of Neanderthal occupation , which has contributed a sequence spanning from MIS 4-5, in the upper levels, to MIS 5, in the lower levels. Level IV shows short and repeated occupations, with a high density of finds related to hunting, and is representative of the upper part of the sequence. The lower...

The flints used to produce the diagnostic Solutrean stone tools from Gruta do Caldeirão are classified, their geological and geographical origin is determined, and results are compared with available data for three other regions of Iberia: the Côa Valley and the Sicó Massif, in Portugal, and Cantabria, in northern Spain. Three of the five Caldeirão...

The Middle Palaeolithic site of Cueva Antón (Murcia, Spain) is a cave/rock shelter with short-term human occupations dated to marine isotopic stages 5a and 3 (MIS 5a and MIS 3). The site provides a high-resolution sequence because the cave’s living floors, organized around hearth features, present rich assemblages of artefacts and faunal remains ra...

Optimal foraging theory and diet breadth models often place large mammals in top-ranking positions due to their high-energy return. However, mass collection of small prey can result in comparable return rates, and dietary diversity is nutritionally beneficial on its own right. A growing body of evidence recovered from several sites in the Mediterra...

The Abrigo de la Quebrada rock shelter was occupied by Neanderthal groups during the early Upper Pleistocene, yielding evidence for their subsistence practices and local resource exploitation. This paper focuses on the plant macroremains and the micromammals, which provide information about occupation patterns, the surrounding landscape, the use of...

The recent publication of a human cranium, dating to ca. 436–390 ka, from Gruta da Aroeira provides an important input to the debate about human evolution during the Middle Pleistocene in Europe and the origin of the Neanderthals. This cranium, chronologically located to Marine Isotope Stage 11c (MIS 11c), appears in association with Acheulean lith...

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...

L'Abrigo de la Quebrada propose une séquence importante, avec neuf niveaux stratigraphiques dont sept présentent des preuves d'occupation appartenant au Paléolithique moyen. De plus, l'existence d'un niveau stérile, le VI, séparant les niveaux supérieurs (II à V) des niveaux inférieurs (VII à IX), permet d'évaluer, dans une perspective diachronique...

Under the twin assumptions that species are also defined by behavior and that the emergence of anatomically modern humans was a speciation event, “behavioral modernity” stands for species‐specific features that would be shared by extant humans and their fossil lineage (Homo sapiens) but not by coeval or ancestral anatomically archaic (and hence, by...

The discovery of a partial cranium at the site of Aroeira (Portugal) dating to 389-436 ka augments the current sample of Middle Pleistocene European crania and makes this specimen penecontemporaneous with the fossils from the geographically close Atapuerca Sima de los Huesos (SH) and Arago sites. A recent study of the cranium documented a unique co...

Objectives The aim of this work is to describe the taphonomic signatures of the Aroeira 3 cranium, with a specific focus on cranial breakage, comparing the cranium with other Middle and Upper Pleistocene hominin fossils in order to approximate the cause of death and the biological agencies and geologic processes involved in the taphonomic record of...

The time of the Aurignacian’s first appearance in the archeological record lies at the heart of debates on the emergence of European anatomically modern humans. Based on a re-study of Archeological Horizon (AH) 3 of Willendorf II, it has been claimed that the Early Aurignacian was present in the loess plains of Lower Austria by 43.5 ka (thousands o...

Bifaces dominate the Acheulean stone tools recovered during the archaeological excavation of layer X of Gruta da Aroeira, dated to 389–436 ka. Faunal remains and a human cranium were found in association with this lithic assemblage. The raw materials used are mostly quartz and quartzite cobbles available in the vicinity of the site. Technological a...

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/nature25738.