
Manuel R. Gonzalez MoralesUniversity of Cantabria | UNICAN · Instituto Internacional de Investigaciones Prehistóricas de Cantabria (IIIPC)
Manuel R. Gonzalez Morales
PhD
Researcher, Grupo de Bioarqueología, Paleoclima y Transformaciones Sociales en la Prehistoria.
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240
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Introduction
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October 1981 - present
Publications
Publications (240)
Micro-archaeological data from sites located in central and eastern Europe show that, in comparison with other Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, Gravettian foragers used fire more intensively and for a wider range of purposes. At these sites, this shift in pyrotechnology overlaps with the onset of periglacial conditions. Gravettian occupations of...
In the last few decades, the field of ancient DNA has taken a new direction towards using sedimentary ancient DNA (sedaDNA) for studying human and mammalian population dynamics as well as past ecosystems. However, the screening of numerous sediment samples from archaeological sites remains a time-consuming and costly endeavor, particularly when tar...
El libro se adentra en el campo más actual de la Arqueología Prehistórica gracias a su multidisciplinar acercamiento metodológico. Con ese fin, la obra aparece estructurada en cinco grandes bloques. Por un lado, el primero de ellos se centra en el análisis del pensamiento simbólico, con especial atención al estudio del arte prehistórico de la penín...
Micro-archaeological data from sites located in central and eastern Europe show that, in comparison with other Upper Paleolithic hunter-gatherers, Gravettian foragers used fire more intensively and for a wider range of purposes. In these regions, this shift in pyrotechnology overlaps with the onset of periglacial conditions and comparable micro-arc...
Over the last few decades, research has significantly enhanced our understanding of the role played by shellfish in human subsistence during the Mesolithic period along the Atlantic coast of Europe. Instrumental to this advance has been the analysis of stable oxygen isotope measurements (δ¹⁸O) from mollusc shells, which offers valuable insights int...
Recent research on human exploitation of molluscs, echinoderms and crustaceans during the Mesolithic in the Cantabrian region (northern Iberia) has shown significant variability in the intensity of the use of coastal resources by the last hunter-fisher-gatherers throughout the ~ 4000-year expanse of the Mesolithic (10,700 – 6,700 cal BP). Previous...
There are now 101 radiocarbon dates from the long Paleolithic and post-Paleolithic culture-stratigraphic sequence in El Mirón Cave, Cantabrian Spain. Here we report on two dates on bone from two different humans whose remains were found in disturbed surface sediments in the cave vestibule rear and that confirm the existence of burials in addition t...
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...
In recent years, the field of ancient DNA (aDNA) has taken a new direction toward studying human population dynamics through sedimentary DNA (sedaDNA), enabling the study of past ecosystems. However, the screening of numerous sediment samples from archaeological sites remains a time-consuming and costly endeavor, particularly when targeting hominin...
The Gravettian site of Fuente del Salín Cave is located in the northern Iberian Peninsula (Cantabrian Region, Spain). In 2016, excavations conducted at the site yielded numerous faunal remains, including mammals and fish. Researchers also recovered molluscs remains during the 1990, 1991, and 2000 campaigns. This study presents the results of the ar...
The El Mirón Cave site in Spain has one of the most complete archaeological and palaeontological records of the Late Pleistocene in the Iberian Peninsula, encompassing most of the last c. 50,000 years. Among other studies, the fossiliferous record has allowed the development of various interpretations of faunal and climatic changes during this peri...
Major advances over the past decade in the field of ancient DNA are providing access to past paleogenomic diversity, but the diverse functions and biosynthetic capabilities of this growing paleome remain largely elusive. Here, we investigated the dental calculus of 12 Neanderthals and 52 anatomically modern humans spanning 100 kya to the present an...
Documenting the intentional structuring of space by hunter-gatherers can be challenging, especially in complex cave contexts. One approach is the spatial analysis of discard patterns. Here, the authors consider the spatial distribution of faunal remains from the Lower Magdalenian Level 115 in El Mirón Cave, Cantabria, to assess a possible structuri...
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...
We revisit the models of Upper Paleolithic forager settlement-subsistence systems for the coastal greater Cantabrian region of Spain proposed by K.W. Butzer and L.G. Straus in the 1980s, with a significant new seasonality dataset from El Mirón Cave in Cantabria (northern Atlantic Iberia). This large, strategically located site contains a nearly com...
Presentamos documentación y análisis detallados de un nódulo de ocre con una retícula grabada, un fragmento de ocre con incisiones profundas y un abrasionador de cuarcita con restos de ocre procedentes de los niveles del Magdaleniense inferior e inicial de la Cueva del Mirón. Estos objetos se añaden al inventario de hallazgos notables de los depósi...
Despite being one of the most important crops in the recent prehistory of Eurasia, the arrival and exploitation of millets in the westernmost part of Europe are still largely underexplored. Here and for the first time, we report multipronged biomolecular evidence of millet consumption along the Atlantic façade of northern Iberia through a combinati...
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...
The cooling and drying associated with the so-called ‘8.2 ka event’ have long been hypothesized as having sweeping implications for human societies in the Early Holocene, including some of the last Mesolithic hunter-gatherers in Atlantic Europe. Nevertheless, detailed ‘on-site’ records with which the impacts of broader climate changes on human-rele...
Journal of Taphonomy
Traditionally, evidence for the human exploitation of coastal and aquatic environments is usually demonstrated by the presence of marine mammals and molluscs on archaeological sites used as food and/or ornaments. However, the identification of fish remains is relatively limited either for conservation or recovery issues in lat...
Prehistoric shell middens hold valuable evidence of past human–environment interactions. In this study, we used carbon (δ ¹³ C) and oxygen (δ ¹⁸ O) stable isotopes of Mytilus galloprovincialis shells excavated from El Perro, La Fragua and La Chora, three Mesolithic middens in Cantabria, Northern Spain, to examine hunter-gatherer subsistence strateg...
Present-day people from England and Wales harbour more ancestry derived from Early European Farmers (EEF) than people of the Early Bronze Age¹. To understand this, we generated genome-wide data from 793 individuals, increasing data from the Middle to Late Bronze and Iron Age in Britain by 12-fold, and Western and Central Europe by 3.5-fold. Between...
This succinct contribution focuses on description and preliminary interpretation of “minor” occupations of the large, strategically located El Mirón Cave on the edge of the Cantabrian Cordillera in eastern Cantabria (Spain) during the Middle and early Upper Magalenian that followed upon the massive, culturally rich, faunally dense, functionally com...
Reconstructing the past variability of marine radiocarbon reservoir effects (MRE) is crucial for generating reliable chronologies for marine species and their consumers. We investigated the temporal MRE variability at the Early-to Mid-Holocene site of El Mazo (Asturias, northern Spain) by using a combination of new and previously published radiocar...
In late Upper Paleolithic Cantabrian Spain, humans developed sophisticated territorial systems, used specialized lithic and osseous tools and weapons, and were skilled hunters of red deer and ibex while also depending increasingly on supplementary food resources, as means of adapting to climatic and environmental change after the Last Glacial Maxim...
Significance
The microbiome plays key roles in human health, but little is known about its evolution. We investigate the evolutionary history of the African hominid oral microbiome by analyzing dental biofilms of humans and Neanderthals spanning the past 100,000 years and comparing them with those of chimpanzees, gorillas, and howler monkeys. We id...
The Mesolithic period in northern Iberia (10.8–6.8 ka cal BP) was characterized by the warmer and wetter environmental conditions compared to the Upper Palaeolithic, as well as by the large accumulation of mollusc shells in the archaeological record as the result of an intensification in coastal resource exploitation during this period, forming the...
El Mirón is an important archaeological cave site in Cantabria (Spain) with a stratigraphy covering the late Middle Paleolithic to the Modern Period. The Magdalenian levels are especially rich in artifacts, faunal remains, and features, and included the burial of an adult female (“the Red Lady”), as well as other scattered human remains, while the...
Paleolithic art offers unique perspectives on prehistoric societies and cultures. It is also considered a key component of modern human behavior. Until recently, Paleolithic artworks were thought to be geographically restricted to a very few areas, especially southwestern Europe. Discoveries of art in other parts of Europe and other parts of the gl...
This paper reconstructs the diet and lifeways of Late Neolithic and Chalcolithic farming groups in the Cantabrian Region (northern Spain) using human remains found at Los Avellanos I and II (Alfoz de Lloredo, Cantabria). A bioarchaeological study was conducted, alongside radiocarbon dating and stable isotope analyses (δ¹³C, δ¹⁵N, δ³⁴S) of human (n...
Objective
To encourage the use of different methodological approaches for the identification of paleopathological lesions and to evaluate osteolytic lesions found on a temporal bone from La Llana cave (Spain).
Materials
Cranial remains recovered from from La Llana cave (Spain) dated to the Bronze Age, 3300 ± 25 BP (1631−1509 cal BC).
Methods
The...
Stable oxygen isotope ratios of mollusc shells (δ18Oshell) offer the possibility to reconstruct coastal resource exploitation patterns and changes in the oceanographic conditions of direct relevance to past human populations. This method relies on the fact that shell carbonate is deposited by molluscs in equilibrium with their surrounding environme...
This introduction to the special issue of the Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory devoted to Pleistocene and Holocene arts seeks to examine a number of recent developments in the study of deep-time images. We argue that, in a context marked by new technological advances, the study of what was traditionally known as ‘prehistoric art’ has bee...
The Early Bronze Age ceramic collection found into the caves of La Llana and El Toral III in Asturias (Spain) presents common decoration like those found in the centre of Cantabrian Spain from the same period, which resemble others found in the Ebro valley and Atlantic Europe. Therefore, the main objective of this work it is to identify the raw mat...
Pre- or post-depositional heating of fossil biominerals will impact resulting amino acid dates, but the study on the effects on their amino acids of dry artificial heating of molluscs has not yet been fully tested. Here we report a study on three mollusc species to show how amino acid content can potentially be used to identify archaeological sampl...
An international group of archaeologists specializing in cave art explain the difficulties they faced to publish their response to another paper, previously published in Science (Hoffmann et al. 2018), reporting a Neanderthal origin of some Spanish cave paintings according to Uranium-thorium method. In their reply, they underlined the different sou...
An international group of archaeologists specializing in cave art explain the diffi- culties they faced to publish their response to another paper, previously published in Science (Hoffmann et al. 2018), reporting a Neanderthal origin of some Spanish cave pain- tings according to Uranium-thorium method. In their reply, they underlined the diffe- re...
The Mesolithic period in the Cantabrian region, a coastal area located in northern Spain, is characterised by a marked increase in the human use of coastal resources in comparison with previous periods, resulting in the formation of so-called “shell middens”. Archaeological investigations have provided insights into the formation processes of these...
El Mirón Cave, located on the northern edge of the Cantabrian Cordillera and 20 km from the present Atlantic shoref, contains a sequence of Upper Paleolithic (Gravettian, Solutrean, Magdalenian and Azilian) levels (ranging in radiocarbon age from 28,000–10,500 BP) atop a minor Middle Paleolithic layer (>46,000 BP) and beneath a long, rich series of...
The inter- and intra-crystalline fractions of Littorina littorea periwinkles recovered from archaeological sites in Northern Spain (covering the Azilian, Magdalenian and Solutrean periods) were examined for amino acid composition and racemisation over time. These fractions were found to be composed of similar proteins, as the amino acids and Asx D/...
Rock art is key for understanding European Palaeolithic societies. Long thought to have been restricted to South-west Europe, recent discoveries on the Balkan Peninsula have expanded significantly the geographic distribution of Upper Palaeolithic figurative rock art, calling into question the idea of its limited distribution. This article presents...
This article presents the second study of ochres associated with the Lower Magdalenian (18.7 cal kya) “Red
Lady” human burial in El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain). In the first study (Seva Román et al., 2015), we
determined that the burial deposit contained iron oxides and idiomorphic hematite that were not from sources
near the site, but possibly f...
Highlights
• First application of palaeoproteomics to eggshell from Palaeolithic Spain
• List of Accipitridae eggshell markers for peptide fingerprinting
• Diurnal birds of prey (Accipitridae) identified as the main taxon at El Mirón
• Humans and birds did not occupy the site at the same time
Abstract
Bird eggs can become part of the archaeologica...
[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0194708.].
Radiocarbon AMS dates produced in this study.
Collagen was extracted using the ultrafiltration protocol in all the samples. A contextual information of each archaeological level is provided, including a description of the lithic and bone artefacts and the archaeological context. Also, sample reference, animal species and skeletal element sampled in...
Biogenic carbonate mollusc shells have the unique property of being a durable material found in many archaeological and geological sites, recording in their shell chemical composition the ambient environmental conditions during the mollusc's lifespan. In particular, mollusc shell Mg/Ca ratios have been suggested to be related to seawater temperatur...
The use of caves during the Late Middle and Early Upper Palaeolithic in Europe was often characterized by alternation between humans (Neandertals and Anatomically Modern Humans) and carnivores. One of the most important karstic areas in Europe that contains a rich archaeological record during this cultural period is the Cantabrian Region, northern...
Level 17 is the principal Cantabrian Lower Magdalenian horizon in the outer vestibule area of El Mirón Cave, dating by radiocarbon to c. 15,500 uncal bp. It has yielded very rich faunal and artifactual collections associated with numerous hearths and abundant fire-cracked rocks. Among the many osseous artifacts are a striation-engraved red deer sca...
This sixth date list for the prehistoric site of El Mirón Cave (Cantabria, Spain) reports on new age determinations for the earliest and last Solutrean occupations (20.4 and 18.0 ¹⁴ C kyr BP) and for a Lower/Initial Magdalenian level with a possible rock wall (16.75 ¹⁴ C kyr BP). The site has now been dated by 92 radiocarbon ( ¹⁴ C) assays. In addi...
Methodological advances in dating the Middle to Upper Paleolithic transition provide a better understanding of the replacement of local Neanderthal populations by Anatomically Modern Humans. Today we know that this replacement was not a single, pan-European event, but rather it took place at different times in different regions. Thus, local conditi...
Supporting information manuscript with a detailed description of each archaeological site sampled in this study.
(DOCX)
Radiocarbon AMS dates produced in this study.
Collagen was extracted using the ultrafiltration protocol in all the samples. A contextual information of each archaeological level is provided, including a description of the lithic and bone artefacts and the archaeological context. Also, sample reference, animal species and skeletal element sampled in...
Radiocarbon accelerator dates from the Cantabrian region mentioned in this work.
Only bone samples with ultrafiltration methods are included. ABA: charcoal fragment treated with a series of acid and base washes; ABOx-SC: charcoal treated with acid and base washes, followed by an oxidation stage and pre-combustion; UF AMS: collagen extracted using t...
Radiocarbon dates from El Cuco modelled in OxCal4.2 [41,43] against INTCAL13 [42].
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Results of sensitivity test conducted on regional models.
(DOCX)
Radiocarbon dates from Covalejos modelled in OxCal4.2 [41,43] against INTCAL13 [42].
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Radiocarbon dates from Amalda modelled in OxCal4.2 [41,43] against INTCAL13 [42].
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CQL individual codes.
(DOCX)
CQL regional codes.
(DOCX)
Results of the Order function comparing the PDF’s of the boundaries dating the start and the end of the archaeological industries from the Cantabrian region.
Cells containing probabilities of >95% are coloured in green, 68–94% in orange and <68 in grey.
(DOCX)
Results of sensitivity test conducted on individual models.
(DOCX)
Radiocarbon dates from Ekain modelled in OxCal4.2 [41,43] against INTCAL13 [42].
(TIF)
Combined shell growth pattern and oxygen isotope analysis has become a powerful approach in palaeoclimate and archaeological studies for reconstructing palaeoclimate conditions and littoral exploitation patterns, respectively. Recent investigations have shown that the gastropod Phorcus lineatus (da Costa, 1778) forms its shell in conditions of near...
The inter-and intra-crystalline fractions of the topshell Phorcus lineatus recovered from modern specimens and shells from archaeological sites in Northern Spain covering Neolithic, Mesolithic, and Upper Magdalenian periods were examined for amino acid composition and racemisation over time. The main loss of proteins from the inter-crystalline frac...