The rockshelter of Abric Romaní is located in a cliff outside of the village of Capellades, in the Autonomous Community of Catalonia, some 50 kilometers west of Barcelona, Spain. Twelve occupation levels have been excavated, consisting of hearths and lithic and bone scatters, eleven (Level B to Level L) of which date to the Middle Paleolithic period, and one to the Early Upper Paleolithic.
Uranium/thorium dates of the deposits are between 70,000-40,000 years ago; the archaeological levels all appear to date to between 49,000-46,000 years. All of these levels are believed to represent Neanderthal occupations, with Mousterian assemblages.
Level I at Abric Romaní (ca. 46,000 years bp) is a Middle Paleolithic occupation with evidence for cooking and consuming of horse and red deer. The lithic assemblage is made up of flint from a source some 5 km away, in contrast to the limestone- and quartz-dominated previous occupations. Level I contains 16 hearths, and some purposefully lined travertine blocks. The lithic and faunal assemblage suggests a diversified exploitation strategy and understanding of regional resources not seen in the earlier occupation layers.
Abric Romaní was first excavated by Amador Romaní in the early 20th century, and then reopened to excavate new levels in the 1990s by a team led by Eudald Carbonell at the Universidad Rovira.
Sources
This glossary entry is part of the About.com Guide to the Middle Paleolithic and the Dictionary of Archaeology.
Vallverdú, J., et al. 2005 Short human occupations in the Middle Palaeolithic Level I of the Abric Romaní rock-shelter (Capellades, Barcelona, Spain). Journal of Human Evolution 48:157-174.
Vaquero, Manuel and Igna Pastó 2001 The Definition of Spatial Units in Middle Palaeolithic Sites: The Hearth-Related Assemblages. Journal of Archaeological Science 28(11):1209-1220.
Vaquero, Manuel 2008 The history of stones: behavioural inferences and temporal resolution of an archaeological assemblage from the Middle Palaeolithic. Journal of Archaeological Science 35(12):3178-3185.
