0000000000550260
AUTHOR
Adolfo Maestro
Occurrence of whale barnacles in Nerja Cave (Málaga, southern Spain): Indirect evidence of whale consumption by humans in the Upper Magdalenian
A total of 167 plates of two whale barnacle species (Tubicinella major Lamarck, 1802 and Cetopirus complanatus Morch, 1853) have been found in the Upper Magdalenian layers of Nerja Cave, Mina Chamber (Maro, Malaga, southern Spain). This is the first occurrence of these species in a prehistoric site. Both species are specific to the southern right whale Eubalena australis, today endemic in the Southern Hemisphere. Because of Antarctic sea-ice expansion during the Last Glacial Period, these whales could have migrated to the Northern Hemisphere, and reached southern Spain. Whale barnacles indicate that maritime-oriented forager human groups found stranded whales on the coast and, because of th…
Maritime-oriented foragers during the Late Pleistocene on the eastern costa del sol (Southeast Iberia): Cueva Victoria (Málaga, Spain).
The Mediterranean coast of Spain is marked by several clusters of Palaeolithic sites: to the south of the Pyrenees, in the area around the Ebro River, in the central part, and on the south coast, one of the southernmost regions in Europe. The number of sites is small compared with northern Iberia, but like that region, the Palaeolithic occupations are accompanied by several rock art ensembles. The archaeological material (both biotic and abiotic resources) and radiocarbon dates presented here were obtained during archaeological fieldwork of professor J. Fortea in the Late Pleistocene deposits in Cueva Victoria, located near the modern coastline and about 150 km north of the Strait of Gibral…
Breaking the waves: Human use of marine bivalves in a microtidal range coast during the Upper Pleistocene and the Early Holocene, Vestíbulo chamber, Nerja Cave (Málaga, southern Spain)
Abstract This paper presents the results obtained from the study of the bivalves recovered during the archaeological excavations in the Vestibulo chamber of Nerja Cave (Malaga, southern Spain) carried out by Professor Francisco Jorda Cerda between 1983 and 1987. These excavations recovered the archaeological record of the sequence from the Gravettian to the Neolithic. The mollusc remains from the Vestibulo chamber of Nerja Cave record constitute an extraordinary collection, composed of more than 136000 specimens which correspond to more than 78 kg. In this work, only marine bivalves were studied. The bivalve remains are more than 124000 specimens, corresponding to more than 65 kg from 31 ta…