
Rosa Maria AlbertICREA - Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies · Department of Prehistory. Autonomous University of Barcelona
Rosa Maria Albert
Professor
About
159
Publications
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Introduction
Archaeologist, specialist in vegetation and landscape reconstruction as well as human use of plant resources, through the study of microarchaeology (phytoliths, oxalates, starches, etc.)
Additional affiliations
September 1996 - June 1999
October 2002 - present
September 1996 - June 1999
Education
January 2000 - January 2001
CNRS - CEPAM
Field of study
- Archaeology /Paleobotany/Phytoliths
October 1996 - June 1999
Publications
Publications (159)
FTIR and phytolith analyses have been used to understand the exceptional preservation of the organic remains at the burial cave of Cova des Pas (Minorca), and to obtain high-resolution data of the plant remains present in the sediments. The presence of sodium nitrate and gypsum suggests a relatively dry environment that has enabled the preservation...
Palms areamongthemostabundant,diverseandeconomicallyimportantfamiliesofplantsintropicalandsubtropicalregionsofthe
world; theirnumberanddiversitymakethemanimportantpartoftheecosystem.Phytolithsareabundantlyproducedinpalms,mainly
the spheroidechinatetypeand,althoughtheirnumberdecreasesnotablyaftertheirdepositioninsoils,theyremainstableforlong
periods...
The abundance and types of phytoliths in the fossil record are taphonomically biased and do not correspond with the macroplant record. To better understand the bias and improve the interpretation of samples from Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania, we analysed the phytoliths from three sample sets: modern grasses, sedges, palm and dicots in the area; modern so...
The Olduvai fossil plants documented by us in this paper are the first direct evidence for open grassland in the late Neogene of Africa based on macroplant remains. Silicified remains of herbaceous ground cover are exceptionally well preserved in situ within Late Pliocene sediments below the initial pyroclastic ash surge unit of Tuff IF in the uppe...
The density and composition of Oldowan stone artifact assemblages deposited during the first ca. 20,000 years of lowermost Bed II times show a recurrent pattern of variation across recognized synsedimentary faults that compartmentalized landscapes of the eastern Olduvai Lake Basin. When active, the faults created minor topographic relief. The upthr...
Here we present multiproxy evidence of a new type of Neanderthal hearth discovered in Vanguard Cave (VC)
(Gibraltar), which is dated ∼ 65 kyr, and associated with Middle Paleolithic stone artefacts. The hearth structure coincides with predictions from theoretical studies which require the use of heating structures for obtaining birch tar, commonly...
Resumen En esta comunicación presentamos el estudio de fitolitos de la Cova del Sardo. Un abrigo que se localiza en el interior del Pirineo axial central, a 1780 metros de altitud, en el corazón del Parque Nacional de Agüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici, El análisis de fitolitos nos ayuda a indagar en el uso de las plantas y la función de los abri...
With a rich, well-dated Early Upper Palaeolithic layer, the Mughr el-Hamamah cave site is key for understanding the Middle-Upper Palaeolithic transition in the Levant. The archaeological deposit consists of two units. Layer A resulted from pastoral activities during the 20th century and Layer B dated between 44.5 and 40.0 ky BP. During Layer A's fo...
Terracing is found widely in the Mediterranean and in other hilly and mountainous regions of the world. Yet while archaeological attention to these ‘mundane’ landscape features has grown, they remain understudied, particularly in Northern Europe. Here, the authors present a multidisciplinary study of terraces in the Breamish Valley, Northumberland....
COORDINACIÓN
José S. Carrión
EQUIPO EDITORIAL
José S. Carrión, Manuel Munuera, Juan Ochando, Manuel Casas-Gallego
Secretaria Técnica y Maquetación
Maximiliano Gómez Rodríguez, Santiago Fernández, Manuel Munuera
Trabajo artístico y gráfico
Gabriela Amorós, Victoria Sánchez-Giner, Ariadna Amorós, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Fernández-Díaz, Pedro Pablo...
COORDINACIÓN
José S. Carrión
EQUIPO EDITORIAL
José S. Carrión, Juan Ochando, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Casas-Gallego, Gabriela Amorós
Secretaria Técnica y Maquetación
Maximiliano Gómez Rodríguez, Santiago Fernández, Manuel Munuera
Trabajo artístico
Gabriela Amorós, Victoria Sánchez-Giner, Ariadna Amorós, Manuel Munuera, Manuel Fernández-Díaz, Pedro...
New occurrences of early artefacts ascribed to the Oldowan tradition come from localities at high level within the caldera of the extinct Kilombe volcano, located in the central rift valley of Kenya. The trachyte cone and caldera of Kilombe volcano formed at ca. 2.5 Ma, and the record of >130 m of sediment-fill indicates that the caldera subsequent...
Arenaza I cave (Galdames, Vizcaya) preserves an archaeological deposit with a chrono-cultural sequence ranging from Upper Paleolithic
to recent Prehistory. After its discovery in 1962, different excavations took place in the cave. During 2017, a stratigraphic review of the site was
carried out to discard the presence of a fumier deposit, and to con...
Terraces and lynchets are ubiquitous worldwide and can provide increasingly important Ecosystem Services (ESs), which may be able to mitigate aspects of climate change. They are also a major cause of non-linearity between climate and erosion rates in agricultural systems as noted from alluvial and colluvial studies. New research in the ‘critical zo...
Previously, Olduvai Bed I excavations revealed Oldowan assemblages <1.85 Ma, mainly in the eastern gorge. New western gorge excavations locate a much older ~2.0 Ma assemblage between the Coarse Feldspar Crystal Tuff (~2.015 Ma) and Tuff IA (~1.98 Ma) of Lower Bed I, predating the oldest eastern gorge DK assemblage below Tuff IB by ~150 kyr. We char...
For five decades Olduvai Gorge has been a key site to reconstruct and understand the relationship between environmental and landscape conditions and use of affordances by early African hominin populations. Following the first Olduvai Gorge Coring project (OGCP) during 2014, a multiproxy microbiological analysis, which includes phytoliths, pollen, d...
Pottery kilns are usually recognizable in the archaeological record based on their prominent and characteristic architectural features, evidence of exposure to high temperatures and associated waste products. Here we describe how we identified a kiln that has no readily recognizable architectural features, but does have an upper chamber full of bro...
A través de l’estudi de fitòlits (microrestes minerals d’origen vegetal)| la nostra investigació ha detectat diferents patrons i estratègies d’explotació de recursos vegetals per part de poblacions d’humans moderns que van habitar a la costa sud de Sud-àfrica| on es localitza la vegetació extratropical de més diversitat i endemisme| la Gran Regió F...
Background:
Opal phytoliths (microscopic silica bodies produced in and between the cells of many plants) are a very resilient, often preserved type of plant microfossil. With the exponentially growing number of phytolith studies, standardization of phytolith morphotype names and description is essential. As a first effort in standardization, the I...
The Cape south coast presents some of the world's most significant early modern human sites preserving evidence for complex human behaviour during the Middle Stone Age (MSA), and it is centrally located in the megadiverse Greater Cape Floristic Region. The extinct Palaeo-Agulhas Plain (PAP) once abutted this region, forming an important habitat for...
Short-lived occupation sites are the most common component of the archaeological record at the regional scale level, but are often underrepresented due to their low amount of cultural material and greater visibility of larger sites. Small ephemeral sites can however provide unique information regarding land and resource use, travel routes, harvesti...
Raised field cultivation (camellones) is a Pre-Columbian technique, now abandoned, which is very extensive in the Llanos de Moxos (Bolivia). The objectives of the research were to understand the effects of human actions on the morphology, genesis and characteristics (especially redoximorphic features and chemical properties) of these soils on ridge...
Cova Bonica has yielded one of the few assemblages of Cardial Neolithic records of directly dated human remains (c. 5470 and 5220 years cal. BC – unmodelled) in the Iberian Peninsula and has provided the first complete genome of an Iberian farmer. A minimum of seven individuals and six age clusters have been ascribed on the basis of the disarticula...
Palaeolandscape studies are an essential tool for understanding adaptation and use of plant- and water-related affordances by hominins. A number of high-resolution palaeolandscape analyses have been carried out at Olduvai Gorge (northern Tanzania) over the last two decades but none have focused on the Tuff ID-IE stratigraphic interval (1.83–1.84 Ma...
The 15 years of survey and research at Aigüestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici National Park, located in central Pyrenees, has shown an early human presence related to the development of an agro-pastoral economic system. The prehistoric human occupation that ranges chronologically from Mesolithic to Bronze Age is normally documented in rock-shelter s...
The site of Can Sadurni Cave (Begues, Barcelona, NE Iberia) is one of the most representative examples for the study of the Neolithic period in Catalonia given its extraordinary stratigraphy. It is during the Postcardial Neolithic (or Middle Neolithic I) when two phases in the cave, the NP0 phase with the 11b and 12 levels (ca. 4735-4501 cal.ANE) a...
The last 14 years of survey and research in the area of Aig´'Aig´Aig´'uestortes i Estany de Sant Maurici National Park, located in southern central Pyrenees, shows an early human presence related to the development of an agro-pastoral economic system. The collected evidences proceed from little cave and rock shelter sites, like Cova del Sardo and O...
The study of plant remains in archaeological sites, along with a better understanding of the use of plants by prehistoric populations, can help us shed light on changes in survival strategies of hunter-gatherers and consequent impacts on modern human cognition, social organization, and technology. The archaeological locality of Pinnacle Point (Moss...
List of the one hundred eighty-three samples analysed from the PP5-6N sequence giving sample location and description, and the main phytolith, relative number of phytoliths per gram of sediment (/g sed) and FT-IR results, Arg, aragonite, Cal, calcite, Cl, clay (b = burned), (nb = not burned), (b? = probably burnt), Dah, dahllite, Nit, nitrate salts...
List of phytolith morphotypes identified, their taxonomic affiliation and their frequencies in samples from the PP5-6N sequence, giving the stratigraphic location and sample information.
(XLSX)
Kruskal-Wallis test of rank sums of the distribution of the phytolith assemblages grouped by plant types and plant parts among the different StratAggs at PP5-6N.
P-values in bold were detected as significant different among StratAggs.
(XLSX)
Results of the Dunn's multiple comparisons test with Bonferroni adjustments for those plant types and plant types identified as significant through the Kruskal-Wallis test.
(XLSX)
Archaeological excavations at the DK site in the eastern Olduvai Basin, Tanzania, age-bracketed between ∼1.88 Ma (Bed I Basalt) and ∼1.85 Ma (Tuff IB), record the oldest lahar inundation, modification, and preservation of a hominin "occupation" site yet identified. Our landscape approach reconstructs environments and processes at high resolution to...
This paper presents a synthesis of the Early Upper Palaeolithic of Cova de les Cendres. Points of special
attention are the sedimentary and micromorphological characterisation of level XVI, the analysis of the
vegetal and animal resources and their incidence on the economy of the Gravettian human groups, and
the characterisation of the landscape du...
Primer volumen de una obra que nace como resultado de cuatro años de investigación desarrollados bajo el proyecto «Aproximación a las primeras comunidades neolíticas del NE peninsular a través de sus prácticas funerarias» (HAR2011-23149), financiado por el Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad. Un amplio equipo, formado por 95 investigadores proc...
This paper reports the results of renewed fieldwork at the HWK EE site (Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania). HWK EE is positioned across the boundary between Lower and Middle Bed II, a crucial interval for studying the emergence of the Acheulean at Olduvai Gorge. Our excavations at HWK EE have produced one of the largest collections of fossils and artefacts f...
Renewed fieldwork at the early Acheulean site of EF-HR (Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania) has included detailed stratigraphic studies of the sequence, extended excavations in the main site, and has placed eleven additional trenches within an area of nearly 1 km², to sample the same stratigraphic interval as in the main trench across the broader paleo-landsc...
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 re...
Supporting tables on micromorphology and archeozoology and taphonomy.
(PDF)
The degree to which desertification during the Holocene resulted from climatic deterioration or alternatively from overgrazing has puzzled Quaternary scientists in many arid regions of the world. In the research reported upon here, a multi-disciplinary investigation of a 5-m deep, ~11,000-year-old sediment column excavated in a dry lake bed in sout...
Despite phytoliths having been used to understand past human use of plants and palaeoenvironment in Middle Paleolithic sites, little is known on this aspect in the well-documented central region of Mediterranean Iberia. This paper presents the first phytolith and mineralogical study conducted at Abrigo de la Quebrada (Chelva, Valencia). Forty-one s...
South Africa continues to receive substantial attention from scholars researching modern human origins. The importance of this region lies in the many caves and rock shelters containing well preserved evidence of human activity, cultural material complexity and a growing number of early modern human fossils dating to the Middle Stone Age (MSA). Sou...
Interdisciplinary methodological approaches are fundamental for studying tool use and crop processing patterns in the archaeological record. Many archaeological studies of plant microfossil evidence, primarily those of phytoliths, starch grains and pollen, are concerned with processing methods which can be replicated through experimentally produced...
Fumier deposits are the product of the recurrent use of caves and rock shelters for stabling livestock and the periodic burning of the resulting dung. Their chronologies in the Mediterranean area extend from Neolithic times up to the Bronze Age, but they are scarce in or absent from Iron Age sites. The study of these deposits has provided important...
The present article discusses the integration of urban geoarchaeological and archaeobotanical data of a series of Dark Earth deposits situated in the alluvial valley of the Senne River in Brussels, Belgium. Due to their homogeneous character, their interpretation is a huge challenge for archaeologists. Through a case-by-case approach, a detailed pi...
Use of the space and settlement patterns at the deposit of San Cristóbal are characterised.Anthropogenic activities at the site are revealed through an interdisciplinar approach based on microstratigraphic and palaeobotanical studies. Correlation of micromorphological, silica phytolith, charcoal, pollen and non-pollen palynomorph analyses and calci...
This study presents the results of a multi-proxy analysis conducted to improve our understanding of the palaeoenvironmental conditions of the freshwater and brackish marshes of Cal Maurici (Barcelona, Spain) and the human impact on them during the mid-Holocene (6171–3891 cal. yr BP). The study integrates data from pollen, phytolith, diatom, charcoa...
Livestock dung is a valuable material in many rural communities worldwide. In our research area, the site of Althiburos and its surroundings, now el Médéïna, in northwestern Tunisia, dung is the main source of fuel for domestic purposes, primarily the processing and cooking of foods. Ovicaprine dung is daily used in traditional mud tannur type oven...
Methodological developments and new paleoanthropological data remain jointly central to clarifying the timing and systemic interrelationships between the Middle-Upper Paleolithic (MP-UP) archaeological transition and the broadly contemporaneous anatomically modern human-archaic biological turnover. In the recently discovered cave site of Mughr el-H...
When is the baseline for Anthropocene? The first indications of human impact on earth closely relate to early human behavior and use of resources. First agricultural societies modified the landscape with the aim of generating their own resources to satisfy the needs of an increasing population. This new system was the result of years of learning an...
En els darrers anys els estudis de microfòssils vegetals i els fitòlits en particular s’han consolidat com una eina indispensable per a la reconstrucció de les condicions paleoambientals i la paleovegetació, com també per traçar la utilització i l’explotació dels recursos vegetals en el passat. En aquest treball s’aborden diferents qüestions metodo...
El estudio de fitolitos de suelos y plantas actuales nos proporciona información relativa a la producción de estos microrestos según la parte y el tipo de planta. Además, la preservación de estos fitolitos una vez son depositados en los suelos varia según las condiciones climáticas y mineralógicas donde crecen. La reconstrucción de la vegetación en...
This paper introduces the sequence of the Buendía rockshelter (Central Spain), a multi-layered site with abundant lithic assemblages attributed to the Magdalenian. We present 18 new radiocarbon dates that firmly position the whole stratigraphy between 15 and 13 14C ka BP (18–16 cal ka BP), making the Buendía rockshelter an excellent palaeoenvironme...
Abstract The Cova del Rinoceront, a site in NE Iberia, contains a thick sedimentary fill preserving a faunal archive from the penultimate glacial and the the last interglacial periods. Layers I to III have been dated to between 74 and 147 ka, coinciding with MIS 5a to 5e, a period poorly represented in the Mediterranean terrestrial record. The resu...